Authors:
Imran Sheikh
and
Michael Short
Affiliation:
University of Leicester, United Kingdom
Keyword(s):
Controller Area Network, Conformance testing, Network protocol verification.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Distributed Control Systems
;
Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics
;
Intelligent Control Systems and Optimization
Abstract:
Since its introduction in the early 1980’s, CAN has become the de-facto communications protocol employed in vehicle and industrial control applications. Before any new product can claim to support CAN-connectivity, compliance with the protocol at the physical and data link layers must be tested and verified. To help standardize the requirements for such testing, ISO has set a draft standard specifically for CAN conformance testing. Traditionally, CAN controllers and transceivers have been implemented at the silicon level, either in the form of dedicated IC’s or as on-chip peripherals of embedded devices. The practical implementation of CAN conformance testers has been realised using dedicated hardware and specially written analysis software; this is a practical approach when testing and verifying conformance prior to high-volume IC manufacture. However, recent years have seen an increased interest in the employment of CAN-connected devices implemented by programmable logic devices su
ch as FPGA’s. Such ‘soft core’ implementations are often in small-volume (or even one-off) batches. In such circumstances, for cost and availability reasons, it may not be practical for developers to use traditional CAN-conformance testing equipment. To help alleviate this problem, this paper proposes a low-cost and easily implemented method which will allow developers to fully test a CAN soft core implementation. The method is based around simple off-the-shelf development boards and the simple analysis tool Chipscope, and allows developers to verify a CAN core against the relevant ISO standards. Finally, the paper describes the use of the test bed in the verification of an open-source CAN soft core implementation.
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