A Low-Cost Design for Non-Standard LIN Signal Generator Based on Transistors

This paper presents a low-cost design for the signal generator of non-standard local interconnect network (LIN) suitable for consistency testing. The generator utilizes inexpensive transistors as switches to toggle between high and low logic levels and is controlled by a microcontroller unit (MCU) to regulate the timing of the high and low logic-level outputs so that non-standard LIN signals can be generated for physical-layer LIN testing. The designed generator can be employed to generate LIN frames with both delayed and advanced rising edge times and physical-layer tests have been conducted. The test results show that the implementation under test (IUT) can well respond to the generated non-standard LIN frames, confirming the feasibility and merits of the design.