A new method for transferring CAN messages using wireless ATM

Considering widespread use of controller area network (CAN) FieldBus communication systems in process control environments it is usually required to interconnect them. Remote CAN nodes in industrial applications, automation systems and military applications may need communicating with each other or a central management unit for several purposes such as exchanging time-critical information. Along with the wireless communication revolution, networking without wires will play a leading role in the industry affecting customers' strategies and implementation plans. Interconnection of remote CAN nodes in industrial real-time applications using wireless asynchronous transfer mode (WATM) will provide significant benefits to global system integration and control. This paper presents a new method describing fixed wireless CAN networking exploiting WATM as an over the air protocol. CAN over WATM mapping issues using encapsulation technique are explained. The performance analysis of the proposed scheme is presented through computer simulation results provided by OPNET Modeler. The results show that benefiting also from the ATM's QoS control mechanisms, different kind of CAN messages carrying various data source traffics are delivered within 100 ms arrival time deadline as required by the SAE benchmark. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.