Arbitration

Whenever the bus is free, any unit may start to transmit a message. If 2 or more units start transmitting messages at the same time, the bus access conflict is resolved by bitwise arbitration using the IDENTIFIER. The mechanism of arbitration guarantees that neither information nor time is lost. If a DATA FRAME and a REMOTE FRAME with the same IDENTIFIER are initiated at the same time, the DATA FRAME prevails over the REMOTE FRAME. During arbitration every transmitter compares the level of the bit transmitted with the level that is monitored on the bus. If these levels are equal the unit may continue to send. When a ’recessive’ level is sent and a ’dominant’ level is monitored (see Bus Values), the unit has lost arbitration and must withdraw without sending one more bit.

Sleep Mode / Wake-up

To reduce the system’s power consumption, a CAN-device may be set into sleep mode with-out any internal activity and with disconnected bus drivers. The sleep mode is finished with a wake-up by any bus activity or by internal conditions of the system. On wake-up, the internal activity is restarted, although the transfer layer will be waiting for the system’s oscillator to stabilize and it will then wait until it has synchronized itself to the bus activity (by checking for eleven consecutive ’recessive’ bits), before the bus drivers are set to “onbus” again. In order to wake up other nodes of the system, which are in sleep-mode, a special wake-up message with the dedicated, lowest possible IDENTIFIER (rrr rrrd rrrr; r = ’recessive’, d = ’dominant’) may be used.