CAN Drivers for New Airplane Development
For a U.S.-based aerospace partner, we engineered production-grade CAN drivers connecting critical onboard components, pumps, pressure sensors, and temperature meters, through a unified Controller Area Network architecture. The result: deterministic, fault-tolerant communication that meets the exacting reliability standards of modern aviation.
Category:
AerospaceIndustry:
AerospaceClient:
US-Based Aerospace PartnerYear:
2024The Challenge
A newly designed aircraft required a communication backbone capable of reliably linking heterogeneous subsystems, from fluid pumps to environmental sensors, under demanding conditions including vibration, electromagnetic interference, and strict real-time timing constraints. Off-the-shelf drivers lacked the necessary determinism and interoperability across the target hardware platforms, making a custom, standards-compliant solution essential.
Our Solution
We designed a modular CAN driver framework implementing both OpenCAN and PureCAN protocol interfaces. The interrupt-driven architecture ensures deterministic message delivery with precise bus-load control. Every driver module includes built-in error detection, automatic error-frame handling, and timing validation. Close collaboration with the aircraft engineering team allowed us to map CAN message IDs and priorities directly to system-level safety requirements, and system-in-the-loop (SIL) testing confirmed real-time stability across simulated flight conditions.
Key Features
- Multi-Device Integration: Unified driver framework interfacing pumps, pressure meters, and temperature sensors: each with distinct data formats and timing requirements.
- OpenCAN & PureCAN Interfaces: Dual-protocol support ensures interoperability with existing avionics toolchains and future system expansion.
- Interrupt-Driven Architecture: Fully asynchronous, interrupt-based design guarantees deterministic response times and zero-blocking message handling.
- Error Detection & Fault Tolerance: Hardware-level CAN error frame detection combined with software recovery logic maintains bus integrity under adverse conditions.
- SIL Testing & Validation: System-in-the-loop testing under simulated vibration, temperature, and EMI conditions confirmed compliance with aerospace reliability standards.
- Direct Customer Collaboration: Embedded within the U.S. partner's engineering team for requirements definition, message-map design, and final integration verification.
Technologies
- CAN Bus
- OpenCAN
- PureCAN
- C
- RTOS
- Embedded Linux
- SIL Testing
- EMI Validation
Results
Delivered a flight-ready CAN communication framework ahead of schedule, enabling the U.S. aerospace partner to proceed confidently to system integration. The project demonstrated KeySoft's ability to produce safety-critical embedded drivers that satisfy both functional and regulatory requirements in modern aviation programs.
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