CAN Monitoring

The CAN interface (Controller Area Network) is used to collect and record communications data exchanged in a CAN group.

The description of the CAN communication is necessary to measure signals from the CAN. The description formats that are currently supported are CANdb (*.dbc) or AUTOSAR (*.arxml) for reading in the description of the CAN environment and A2L (*.a2l) for writing the description into file.

CANdb and AUTOSAR description formats

A CANdb description file is used to obtain information on the messages and signals used in the CAN environment.

An AUTOSAR (AUTomotive Open System ARchitecture) description file is a file in XML format (*.arxml) which is describing the AUTOSAR system, e.g. the system topology including data busses and clustering, the software components, and the hardware. INCA uses only the CAN bus descriptions from the AUTOSAR system templates.

For the CANdb description format and the AUTOSAR system template, the Database Manager has its own readers. The readers read the CANdb or AUTOSAR information into the INCA database.

CAN data is only supported in INCA on signal value levels. A hierarchical view of message levels is only available with variable selection. The CANdb or AUTOSAR format contains symbolic information about the sender, messages and signal values with physical conversion. No information is available, however, on the bus baud rate. The baud rate must be selected in the hardware configuration for the respective CAN interface.

Because signals are processed independently of the messages in INCA, it is possible to use the same signal names more than once in different messages. If the same signal name appears in different messages, the message name is added to the signal name separated by a ".". This occurs when the CANdb or AUTOSAR format is converted to the INCA database format.

See also

Module Parameters for CAN Monitoring