FPGA-based testbed for timing behavior evaluation of the Controller Area Network (CAN)

The Controller Area Network (CAN) is one of the most popular networks for industrial distributed embedded systems, particularly automotive systems. In these systems the timely transmission of data messages is a key requirement. In this paper, a physical testbed is presented that allows the evaluation of the timing behavior of CAN message transmissions. The use of FPGAs as processing nodes allows to accurately perform measurements without influencing the original system due to the inherent parallelism of programmable hardware. As a case study, the improvement of response times by using dynamic scheduling of messages is shown with the testbed. Furthermore, the testbed helps to identify time critical simulation parameters.