Implementation of Fault Tolerant Network Management System for CAN Bus using CANopen

Embedded systems are now-a-days complex distributed systems (e.g. automobiles, elevators, building climate control systems, and aircrafts) with various demands on networking capabilities. These Networked Control Systems are Distributed Control Systems (DCS) where controllers, sensors, actuators and other system components communicate over a network. It is easy to imagine that according to the high complexity of the networked electronic systems, the risk of failures of the system is increasing. So there is a need to provide high levels of reliability within the network. To accomplish this task; a network management system is used. CANopen protocol is a networking system based on CAN serial bus. It has been widely applied into networked control systems. The CANopen networking functionality is implemented in one of the CAN nodes. This node is responsible for conducting networking functionality such as mode control, error control and configuration control. The network is vulnerable if this node fails. This paper presents a fault tolerant system, which deals with failure of so called Network Manager and sorting out this situation by providing a redundant node. The redundant node is provided with optional functionality of Network Management along with its original functionality o