Cruise Control Units

Controller Area Network (CAN or CAN-bus) is a computer network protocol and bus standard designed to allow microcontrollers and devices to communicate with each other and without a host computer. more...

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It was designed specifically for automotive applications but is now also used in other areas.

Origins

CAN-bus was originally developed in the 1988 by Intel Corporation and Robert Bosch GmbH

Applications

Automotive applications

A modern automobile may have as many as 50 such control units for various subsystems. Typically the biggest processor is the Engine Control Unit; others are used for transmission, airbags, antilock braking, cruise control, audio systems, windows, mirror adjustment, etc. Some of these form independent subsystems, but communications among others is essential. A subsystem may need to control actuators or receive feedback from sensors. The CAN standard was devised to fill this need.

The CAN bus may be used in vehicles to connect engine control unit and transmission, or (on a different bus) to connect the door locks, climate control, seat control, etc. Today the CAN bus is also used as a fieldbus in general automation environments: this is especially because of the cheap prices of some CAN Controllers and processors. On the other hand any official use of CAN requires that a fee for the CAN Protocol License is to be paid to Bosch who developed the protocol and hold patents.

Technology

CAN is a broadcast (bus), differential serial bus standard for connecting electronic control units (ECUs).

Each node is able to send and receive messages, but not simultaneously: a message (consisting primarily of an ID — usually chosen to identify the message-type/sender — and up to 8 message bytes) is transmitted serially onto the bus, one bit after another — this signal-pattern codes the message (in NRZ) and is sensed by all nodes.

The devices that are connected by a CAN network are typically sensors, actuators and control devices. A CAN message never reaches these devices directly, but instead a host-processor and a CAN Controller is needed between these devices and the bus.

If the bus is free, any node may begin to transmit. If two or more nodes begin sending messages at the same time, the message with the more dominant ID (which has more dominant bits) will overwrite other nodes' less dominant IDs, so that eventually (after this arbitration on the ID) only the dominant message remains and is received by all nodes.

Read more at Wikipedia.org