Layer 1 and 2 of a ring-based, real-time network for in-vehicle communication

A novel network called CR3 is presented, which can couple up to 16 nodes per ring, as a revival of ring-based network-topologies. It is shown that rings are useful for real-time data transfers in vehicles for reasons of price, speed, cable length, weight and time-determinism. It is also shown that it is possible to implement complex MAC layers and send services solemnly in FPGA hardware without software or CPU. CR3 is with 0,871 Gbit/s and a latency of 514 ns for hard real-time transfer at least 5.8 times faster than the fastest in-vehicle network and is comparable to 1G Ethernet. However, it exceeds all these networks and field buses by the quality and variety of its transmission services and its real-time capabilities. Application areas for CR3 are in real-time communication-systems inside of land, air, and space vehicles and in process and factory automation.