Design of a test platform for CAN BUS in automotive field

Communications in automotive field became critical since electronic computers have been embedded in cars to implement safety features. Being a safety component, each of them have to stand some standard of security in order to avoid jeopardizing human lives. For this matter, communications between components in automotive field need to pass a process of validation. The majority of these communications happens on the Controller Area Network. Since its introduction, it has become the most common network protocol used in automotive field. This serial bus system is the main actor of this thesis: here is reported how a test platform has been designed in order to specifically test and stress this protocol. The developed module, called “DIANA Disturbance Tool (DDT)”, have been designed starting from a digital design, continuing with the firmware and ending with the analog design, all in such a way as to comply with the existing test bench, the Digital Instrument for Automatic Network Analysis (DIANA). The digital design is the core of the project and provides the possibility to introduce both logic and analog errors and to generate a trigger signal when a specific event occurs. The firmware interacts between the hardware and the external test bench, granting the entire control of the digital design. The hardware is controlled in order to act on the bus, eventually applying errors. Furthermore, an application able to control the system and to send and receive CAN messages has been developed for testing purposes. The design has been tested with behavioral testbenches and with the help of an Integrated Logic Analyzer. The next step is to integrate the project with the DIANA platform and to improve it to make it compatible with the CAN FD protocol.