The enhancement permits automotive manufacturers and suppliers to use NovaCarts systems to exhaustively test communication between control units over CAN FD.
The enhanced CAN protocol is now integrated as standard in all new NovaCarts HiL simulators. It is also possible to easily upgrade existing systems. While integrating CAN FD, MicroNova also upgraded the vehicle bus nodes used in its test systems as well as its NovaCarts Test Operation Software in order to allow a link between gateways and error functions. Since the new HiL systems use the same tool chain as all NovaCarts systems, experienced NovaCarts users can continue to work as usual with them.
“Classic CAN buses are increasingly reaching their limits as a result of the constant growth in the volume of communication in vehicles,” explains Martin Bayer, Business Unit Head of Testing Solutions at MicroNova AG. “CAN FD offers car makers and automotive suppliers a powerful and inexpensive solution for building on the well-proven and familiar CAN standard and at the same time for creating additional bandwidth in their bus systems.”
The CAN FD protocol allows significantly more data to be transferred than with the classic CAN standard. To achieve this, the payload was increased from eight to 64 bytes and a faster data transmission rate introduced.