Fault Tolerant Protocol for CAN Flash Programming

This paper proposes a fault tolerant protocol for CAN (Control Area Network) flash programming. Recently, the need of CAN flash programming is rapidly increasing because the number of installed ECU (Electronic Control Unit) increases noticeably and the adoption rate of CAN is very high. Although some development tool companies and semiconductor companies provide solutions, there is no standards for CAN flash programming until now. Furthermore, there is always a risk, when programming an application into flash memory using downloaded programming algorithms, that an external disturbance may corrupt the programming process. This paper suggests that the standards of CAN flash programming should include mechanism for the recovery from faults and certification process. Interaction diagram between host PC and ECU summarizes the messages and includes an additional phase for the certification of the CAN communication capability of ECU. The state diagram of ECU with respect to CAN flash programming is developed and includes additional states for the recovery from faults and the certification of CAN communication. Proposed protocol guarantees that ECU can be programmed via CAN without the risk of being dead node. This paper shows the feasibility by summarizing the experimental results.