DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF CAN / CAN, CAN 1 ETHERNET AND CAN/ATM BRIDGES

Abstract

The Controller Area Network (CAN) is a high performance and highly reliable advanced serial cornmunication protocol which effıciently supports distributed real-time control systems at high speed, low cost, and a very high level data security. The CAN was originally developed as an automotive standard for a serial interface between electronic control units, but in a short time, it has become a desirable, cheap solution for networks in industrial environments. The fast growth of the CAN in industrial applications results some potential problems such as the size of the area that the devices, controlled by the CAN, are distributed and the communication between the CAN and the existing network systems (such as Ethernet or ATM). One of the solutions to these problems is to use bridges. However, the characteristics of the CAN creates problems, when CAN segments are connected by a bridge, since CAN frames do not contain any information related to destination address, source address, or LAN number that are used by traditional address-hased bridges for routing decisions. Thus, new bridges (suitable for the CAN protocol features) must be designed to overcome the problems. The objective of this paper is not only to investigate the characteristics of bridged CAN systems and to give a bridge proposal to connect CAN segments, but also to design and implement bridges that connect the CAN and existing LAN s and provide communication between them.