CAN Bus - Demystified

A simple two-wire differential serial bus system, the Controller Area Network (CAN) bus operates in noisy electrical environments with a high level of data integrity, and its open architecture and user-definable transmission medium make it extremely flexible. Capable of high-speed (1 Mbits/s) data transmission over short distances (40m) and low-speed (5 kbits/s) transmissions at lengths of up to 10,000 m, the multi-master CAN bus is highly fault tolerant, with powerful error detection and handling designed in.

Developed by Bosch in Germany, CAN was originally designed specifically for the automotive market, which remains its primary application area today. CAN is also ideal as a general industrial bus.

The main benefits of the CAN Bus are:
  - The ability to digitize analog signals at the source, eliminating noise
  - Reduction of multiple, home-run analog wires
  - Creation of local nodes for load reduction on main processor
  - Two-way communications for actuation, as well as sensor measurements