Fieldbus and Networking in Process Automation

10 CAN Bus

10.1 Introduction

CAN, which stands for Controller Area Network, was developed by Bosch of Germany in 1986 to take care of growing demand of electronic control systems in automobile industries. CAN is a serial communication bus protocol standardized by the International Standards Organization (ISO). It does not use a master-slave or a token-passing method to access the bus. Instead it uses a unique bus access control method, called “nondestructive bitwise arbitration.” It is a very simple, highly reliable, and prioritized communication protocol among sensors, actuators, and intelligent devices. A producerconsumer technique is applied to access the physical medium based on carrier sense multiple access with collision detection (CSMA-CD). ...