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CAN FD Intro

CAN FD - A Brief Introduction

CAN FD (CAN with Flexible Data Rate) was developed by Bosch out of the necessity for greater bandwidth throughput in the automotive industry. Working closely with carmakers and other CAN experts, Bosch began development on the improved protocol in 2011, releasing it in 2012. CAN FD is an extension of the classical CAN protocol developed by Bosch in the 1980s (ISO 11898-1). CAN FD is compatible with existing CAN 2.0 networks, so new CAN FD devices can coexist on the same network with the existing CAN devices.

The enhanced CAN FD protocol addresses 3 main areas that are limitations with classical CAN.

  • Higher bandwidth
    • CAN FD provides shorter CAN-frames while increasing the bitrate. By reducing overhead, data transmission has increased from 1 Mpbs with standard CAN to 12 Mbps with CAN FD.
  • Greater storage capacity per CAN-frame
    • CAN FD can hold more data per CAN-frame. This results to an increase in max payload from 8 bytes in standard CAN to 64 bytes in CAN FD.
  • Improved CRC-algorithm
    • CAN FD has a better performing CRC-algorithm which reduces the risk of undetected errors.

Most of our standard CAN products are now available in CAN FD versions. More information about CAN FD can be found here.