Timely use of the CAN protocol in critical hard real-time systems with faults

Abstract

The presence of network errors such as electrical interference affects the timing properties of a CAN (Controller Area Network) bus. In hard real-time systems it is often better to not receive a message than to receive it too late. Aborting late messages is a form of real-time error confinement which prevents late messages affecting the timeliness of other messages and processes. This can be used to help guarantee hard real-time performance in a distributed system using CAN in the presence of unbounded network errors.