Integration of a CAN-based connection-oriented communication model into Real-Time CORBA

The Real-Time CORBA and minimumCORBA specifications are important steps towards defining standard-based middleware which can satisfy real-time requirements in an embedded system. These requirements can only be fulfilled if the middleware utilizes the features of a real-time network. The controller area network (CAN) is one of the most important networks in the field of real-time embedded systems. Consequently, this paper presents a CAN-based connection-oriented point-to-point communication model and its integration into Real-Time CORBA. In order to make efficient use of the advantages of CAN, we present an inter-ORB protocol, which uses smaller message headers for CAN and maps the CAN priorities to a band of CORBA priorities. We also present design and implementation details with some preliminary performance results.