Response time analysis under errors for CAN

Abstract

The Controller Area Network (CAN) is extensively used for timely communication in automotive and other applications. As timing analysis of CAN messages is emerging into industrial practice, and as the use of CAN in safety-critical applications is increasing, there is an apparent need to include the effects of transmission errors in the analysis of message latencies. The authors provide a general fault model and extend the timing analysis of CAN messages to cater for the effects of transmission errors on message latencies. This fault model helps us in composing the effects of interferences from multiple sources and to account for them in the calculation of message response times. We illustrate our model by applying it to derive the worst case latencies of a subset of messages selected from the frequently used SAE case study. We also discuss and illustrate the implications on message latencies for some realistic fault scenarios.