An Active Star Topology and Token Ring for Fault Detection and Improvement in CAN

The Controller Area Network (CAN) is a field bus that is now-a-day widespread in distributed embedded systems due to its electrical robustness, low price, and deterministic access delay. However, its use in safety-critical applications has been controversial due to dependability limitations, such as those arising from its bus topology. In particular, in a CAN bus; there are multiple components such that if any of them is faulty, a general failure of the communication system may happen. In this paper, the authors propose a design for an active star topology called CANcentrate. And also describes the token ring system for two way communication to improve the fault at the node point.