First prototype and experimental assessment of media management in ReCANcentrate

Although the use of star topologies to improve dependability in field-buses is gaining in importance, as in TTP/C and FlexRay, a mature technology such as the Controller Area Network (CAN) remained essentially a bus-only network. Thus, we proposed a CAN-compliant replicated star topology called ReCANcentrate, which has advanced error-containment and fault-tolerance mechanisms. Its two hubs are coupled with each other and create a single logical broadcast domain that allowed us to propose, in a previous work, a strategy for each node to easily manage the replicated star by means of a software driver that abstracts away the details of the replication. This paper describes the main functionalities of this driver, as well as the first tests we have conducted, on a real ReCANcentrate prototype, to verify the correctness and the performance of the driver in the absence and in the presence of faults.