An introduction to CANopen and CANopen communication issues

The Controller Area Network (CAN) provides the user with many powerful features, including multi-master functionality and the ability to broadcast/multicast telegrams. The low cost of CAN components, high data reliability and short reaction times, together with the huge user base will ensure that the future of CAN is safe for an extremely long time to come. However, to ensure inter-operability between CAN components, several higher-layer protocols have been developed to allow devices to communicate in a standardised manner. CANopen is one of these protocols and has already seen wide adoption within industry and other sectors, such as building automation and public transport. This paper discusses various aspects of CANopen communication and gives a general overview of some of its powerful features.