Wireless Controller Area Network Using Token Frame Scheme

Abstract

The controller area network (CAN) has been long regarded as the pioneer in standardizing vehicle bus standard. Its influence has even been reached out to various applications in industrial automation; which includes military, aviation, electronics and many others. With wireless technology becoming more pervasive, there is a need for CAN too to migrate and evolve to its wireless counterpart. In this paper, a new wireless protocol named wireless controller area network (WCAN) is introduced. WCAN is an adaptation of its wired cousin, controller area network (CAN) protocol which has not being properly defined. The proposed WCAN uses the concept introduced in wireless token ring protocol (WTRP); a MAC protocol for wireless networks and efficient in a sense to reduce the number of retransmission due to collisions. Additionally, it follows most of its wired cousin attributes on message-based communication. Message with higher priority has the first priority in transmitting their message into the medium. In WCAN, stations or nodes take turns in transmitting upon receiving the token frame that are circulating around the network for a specified amount of time. WCAN was tested in a simulation environment and is found that it outperform IEEE 802.11 in a ring network environment.