CAN protocol

The CAN protocol is an international standard defined in the ISO 11898. Beside the CAN
protocol itself the conformance test for the CAN protocol is defined in the ISO 16845, which
guarantees the interchangeability of the CAN chips.

Principles of data exchange

CAN is based on the “broadcast communication mechanism”, which is based on a message-
oriented transmission protocol. It defines message contents rather than stations and station
addresses. Every message has a message identifier, which is unique within the whole network
since it defines content and also the priority of the message. This is important when several
stations compete for bus access (bus arbitration).

As a result of the content-oriented addressing scheme a high degree of system and configuration
flexibility is achieved. It is easy to add stations to an existing CAN network without making any
hardware or software modifications to the present stations as long as the new stations are purely
receivers. This allows for a modular concept and also permits the reception of multiple data and
the synchronization of distributed processes. Also, data transmission is not based on the
availability of specific types of stations, which allows simple servicing and upgrading of the
network.

Real-time data transmission

In real-time processing the urgency of messages to be exchanged over the network can differ
greatly: a rapidly changing dimension, e.g. engine load, has to be transmitted more frequently
and therefore with less delays than other dimensions, e.g. engine temperature.

The priority, at which a message is transmitted compared to another less urgent message, is
specified by the identifier of each message. The priorities are laid down during system design in
the form of corresponding binary values and cannot be changed dynamically. The identifier with
the lowest binary number has the highest priority.
Bus access conflicts are resolved by bit-wise arbitration of the identifiers involved by each
station observing the bus level bit for bit. This happens in accordance with the wired-and-
mechanism, by which the dominant state overwrites the recessive state. All those stations (nodes)
with recessive transmission and dominant observation lose the competition for bus access. All
those "losers" automatically become receivers of the message with the highest priority and do not
re-attempt transmission until the bus is available again.

Transmission requests are handled in order of their importance for the system as a whole. This
proves especially advantageous in overload situations. Since bus access is prioritized on the basis
of the messages, it is possible to guarantee low individual latency times in real-time systems.

Message frame formats

The CAN protocol supports two message frame formats, the only essential difference being in
the length of the identifier. The “CAN base frame” supports a length of 11 bits for the identifier,
and the “CAN extended frame” supports a length of 29 bits for the identifier.

CAN base frame format

A CAN base frame message begins with the start bit called "Start Of Frame (SOF)", this is
followed by the "Arbitration field" which consist of the identifier and the "Remote Transmission
Request (RTR)" bit used to distinguish between the data frame and the data request frame called
remote frame. The following "Control field" contains the "IDentifier Extension (IDE)" bit to
distinguish between the CAN base frame and the CAN extended frame, as well as the "Data
Length Code (DLC)" used to indicate the number of following data bytes in the "Data field". If
the message is used as a remote frame, the DLC contains the number of requested data bytes.
The "Data field" that follows is able to hold up to 8 data byte. The integrity of the frame is
guaranteed by the following "Cyclic Redundant Check (CRC)" sum. The "ACKnowledge (ACK)
field" compromises the ACK slot and the ACK delimiter. The bit in the ACK slot is sent as a
recessive bit and is overwritten as a dominant bit by those receivers, which have at this time
received the data correctly. Correct messages are acknowledged by the receivers regardless of the
result of the acceptance test. The end of the message is indicated by "End Of Frame (EOF)". The
"Intermission Frame Space (IFS)" is the minimum number of bits separating consecutive
messages. Unless another station starts transmitting, the bus remains idle after this.

CAN extended frame format

The difference between an extended frame format message and a base frame format message is
the length of the identifier used. The 29-bit identifier is made up of the 11-bit identifier (“base
identifier”) and an 18-bit extension (“identifier extension”). The distinction between CAN base
frame format and CAN extended frame format is made by using the IDE bit, which is transmitted
as dominant in case of an 11-bit frame, and transmitted as recessive in case of a 29-bit frame. As
the two formats have to co-exist on one bus, it is laid down which message has higher priority on
the bus in the case of bus access collision with different formats and the same identifier / base
identifier: The 11-bit message always has priority over the 29-bit message.
The extended format has some trade-offs: The bus latency time is longer (in minimum 20 bit-
times), messages in extended format require more bandwidth (about 20 %), and the error
detection performance is lower (because the chosen polynomial for the 15-bit CRC is optimized
for frame length up to 112 bits).

CAN controllers, which support extended frame format messages are also able to send and
receive messages in CAN base frame format. CAN controllers that just cover the base frame
format do not interpret extended frames correctly. However there are CAN controllers, which
only support the base frame format but recognize extended messages and ignore them.

Detecting and signaling errors

Unlike other bus systems, the CAN protocol does not use acknowledgement messages but
instead signals errors immediately as they occur. For error detection the CAN protocol
implements three mechanisms at the message level (data link layer: OSI layer 2):
• Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC): The CRC safeguards the information in the frame by
adding a frame check sequence (FCS) at the transmission end. At the receiver this FCS is
re-computed and tested against the received FCS. If they do not match, there has been a
CRC error.
• Frame check: This mechanism verifies the structure of the transmitted frame by checking
the bit fields against the fixed format and the frame size. Errors detected by frame checks
are designated "format errors".
• ACK errors: Receivers of a message acknowledge the received frames. If the transmitter
does not receive an acknowledgement an ACK error is indicated.
The CAN protocol also implements two mechanisms for error detection at the bit level (physical
layer: OSI layer 1):
• Monitoring: The ability of the transmitter to detect errors is based on the monitoring of
bus signals. Each station that transmits also observes the bus level and thus detects
 differences between the bit sent and the bit received. This permits reliable detection of
global errors and errors local to the transmitter.
• Bit stuffing: The coding of the individual bits is tested at bit level. The bit representation
used by CAN is "Non Return to Zero (NRZ)" coding. The synchronization edges are
generated by means of bit stuffing. That means after five consecutive equal bits the
transmitter inserts a stuff bit into the bit stream. This stuff bit has a complementary value,
which is removed by the receivers.
If one or more errors are discovered by at least one station using the above mechanisms, the
current transmission is aborted by sending an "error frame". This prevents other stations from
accepting the message and thus ensures the consistency of data throughout the network. After
transmission of an erroneous message that has been aborted, the sender automatically re-attempts
transmission (automatic re-transmission). Nodes may again compete for bus access.

However effective and efficient the method described may be, in the event of a defective station
it might lead to all messages (including correct ones) being aborted. If no measures for self-
monitoring were taken, the bus system would be blocked by this. The CAN protocol therefore
provides a mechanism to distinguish sporadic errors from permanent errors and local failures at
the station. This is done by statistical assessment of station error situations with the aim of
recognizing a station's own defects and possibly entering an operation mode in which the rest of
the CAN network is not negatively affected. This may continue as far as the station switching
itself off to prevent other nodes' messages erroneously from being recognized as incorrect.