Wireless industrial networking using CAN MAC-sublayer

Abstract

CAN networks, controller area networks, can be used in the framework of real time distributed industrial applications. Such applications cover the automatons and robot systems in manufacture and the distributed and parallel processing systems in industrial and networking fields. The unique difference in those networks resides in the access units (sensor/actuators vs network access, etc.), the other hardware and software architectures remain the same. CAN networks guarantee sufficiently short time latency and it has been shown that these systems exceed in performance token-based networks. So, the medium access control used in CAN MAC sublayer, adopted for real time industrial communications, can be used as MAC protocol for a fixed or mobile industrial wireless based CAN protocol (WCAN).