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Engineering Note: Implementing SAE J1939 In Vehicle Design

Posted by Industry News on

Implementing SAE J1939 In Vehicle Design

Heavy-duty commercial and off-highway vehicles, such as agricultural and construction equipment, pose various electrical and mechanical engineering challenges.

These vehicles must be efficient, durable, and reliable as they have long service lives in demanding environmental conditions that can include extreme temperature, dirt, dust, and altitude.

A key consideration during commercial and off-highway E/E architectural definition is the SAE J1939 specification series for communications between ECUs in the vehicle. SAE J1939 is a higher-layer protocol (HLP) for communications across CAN Bus networks that provide standardized application layer messages and conversion rules across commercial, off-highway, and heavy-duty manufacturers. These rules support interoperability between manufacturers and implementations, such as between tractor unit and trailer.

Modern commercial and off-highway vehicles contain up to six CAN Bus networks to transmit data around the vehicle architecture. The CAN Bus networks connect the dozens of ECUs in the vehicle architecture and carry critical information that ensures the vehicle operates smoothly and safely. Commercial and off-highway OEMs must re-design or update these complex network designs for each new vehicle or derivative they produce. Therefore, accurate and efficient design flow for J1939 networks is a critical piece of commercial and off-highway vehicle development.

Read the Mentor Engineering Note (PDF)...


SAE J1939 ECU Simulator Board With USB Port

SAE J1939 ECU Simulator Board With USB Port

The  jCOM.J1939.USB gateway board is a high-performance, low-latency vehicle network adapter for SAE J1939 applications. It allows any host device with a USB COM port to monitor SAE J1939 data traffic and communicate with the SAE J1939 vehicle network.

The board supports the full SAE J1939 protocol according to J1939/81 Network Management (Address Claiming) and J1939/21 Transport Protocol (TP). It is also supported by an extensive programming interface for Windows and Linux/Ubuntu applications, including full C/C++/C# source code for short time-to-market developments.

The strength of the board lies in the fact that the entire SAE J1939 protocol, including all timing requirements, is stored on-chip, thus taking the burden off the main system. The board uses a USB COM port to communicate with the main system, i.e. all data transfer is handled through a standard COM port access. 

The communication protocol between the board and the main system is well documented and thus allows a porting to any computer system with a USB connection. Working source code libraries exist for Windows (C# under Visual Studio 2012/2013), Linux and its derivatives (C++ using Code::Blocks), and Raspberry Pi (C using the standard gcc compiler).

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