Interconnection of CAN segments through IEEE 802.16 wireless MAN

The Controller Area Network (CAN) is a high-performance and highly reliable advanced serial communication protocol, which efficiently supports distributed real-time control. CAN-based distributed control systems have generally two main problems that are the size of distributed area and the need for communication with other LANs and with remote CAN segments. A straightforward solution is to use internetworking devices with wireless support to extend CAN segments. In this paper, a new solution to interconnect CAN segments is proposed, which uses a wireless MAN based on the IEEE 802.16 standard as a backbone system. Also, the solution describing a model for internetworking unit integrates the traffic generated by CAN segments into IEEE 802.16 wireless MAN using encapsulation technique.