CAN compression using signal rearrangement

The controller area network (CAN) systems have been successfully applied in many fields due to its high reliability and cost efficiency. CAN was designed for multiplexing communication between electronic control units (ECUs) in vehicles and many high-level industrial control applications. When a CAN bus is overloaded by a large number of ECUs connected to the CAN bus, both the waiting time and the error probability of the data transmission are increased. Thus, it is desirable to reduce the CAN frame length, since the time duration for the data transmission is proportional to the frame length. In this paper, we present a CAN message compression method using signal rearrangement to reduce the CAN frame length. Experimental results indicate that CAN transmission data can be compressed by up to 85% with the proposed method. By using an embedded test board, it is shown that 64-bit EMS CAN data compression can be performed within 0.15 ms; consequently the proposed algorithm can be successfully used in automobile applications.