Overcoming babbling-idiot failures in CAN networks: A simple and effective bus guardian solution for the FlexCAN architecture

This paper is concerned with the issue of protecting CAN networks against the consequences of babbling-idiot faults such as unscheduled traffic generated by a faulty node that denies any other communication. A full solution of the problem would greatly enhance the dependability of the CAN networks, making them applicable to safety-critical systems. After explaining the weakness of the native CAN protocol in tolerating the babbling-idiot faults, this paper shows how the FlexCAN architecture is suitable to tolerate them effectively. To this aim, a simple bus guardian is proposed and tested. The results of the test are given in this paper.