FROM EDN EUROPE: Software simulates LIN/CAN-bus systems
By Graham Prophet -- EDN, February 3, 2005
Automotive-system designers working with the LIN bus can comprehensively simulate and test the reconfiguration of a complete network built to the standard LIN2.0. The DENoe.LIN software tool, in its latest 5.1 release, can model all components of a LIN network, including automatic simulation of slave-node reconfiguration. (For a detailed account of the operation of the LIN network, see the article "LIN Simplifies and Standardises In-Vehicle Networks" on page 26 of this issue.) The tool can model LIN2.0 slave nodes with or without volatile memory, and the Interactive Master feature simulates a 2.0 master node. In real applications, multiple LIN networks are likely to coexist and interoperate. The software can represent as many as 32 networks in parallel. Designers can build schedule tables for the reconfiguration process using a drag-and-drop interface, and the resulting tables can be invoked and monitored interactively as the software exercises the simulated system.
The software comes from Stuttgart-based Vector Informatik, producer of test systems for networks that include CAN, MOST (optical-fibre-based media-distribution network), and FlexRay. DENoe.LIN can expand to include CAN interfaces, allowing engineers to test gateways between LIN and CAN networks. Users write reusable protocol and application tests and test-case descriptions either in a C-like language called CAPL, or using test patterns defined in XML. The system generates test results in XML.
New in this version of the software (and in associated firmware for Vector's hardware interfaces) is the ability to stress the network with a range of protocol errors. The system simulates errors including invalid parity or checksum, noncompliant sync-break or -delimiter conditions, and short message errors. Users can intervene to create errors down to the level of individual response bits from slave nodes. Download a demonstration version of the tool from the company's Web site.
Vector Informatik, +49 711 80670498, www.vector-informatik.com.
