Hardware EDF scheduler implementation on controller area network controller

Controller area network (CAN) is widely used in real-time automobile control and is gaining wider acceptance as a standard for automotive networking. The applicability of earliest deadline (EDF) techniques to the scheduling of CAN messages has been shown in previous researches. Earliest deadline can guarantee higher network utilization than fixed-priority schemes like deadline or rate monotonic (DM, RM), but the EDF technique continuous deadlines (priorities) update at each scheduling round results in high CPU overhead. The paper describes a way to decrease such CPU overhead by implementing EDF scheduler dedicated hardware and embedding it within the CAN controller open core IP. Consequently high reduction in CPU overhead is achieved. This paper also validates the design and implementation of the hardware EDF algorithm on a commonly used CAN controller connected on a SoC design. Hence, this paper can be considered as introducing a new generation of more efficient CAN controllers to be used in several industry domains.