Abstract
The Controller Area Network (CAN) [1][2] is widely adopted in vehicle networks due to the simple communication protocol. However, with the increasing node number in vehicle network, insufficient bandwidth and faulty nodes or links, become two important problems in a single CAN bus. We propose a cluster ring topology [3][4] for CAN bus to tackle both the bandwidth and fault tolerance problems. By applying the cluster ring topology, the extra bandwidth can also be used to fault tolerance for link or node fails. In addition, we estimate the injection rate versus schedulable messages in the three cluster ring topologies. The throughput models under different link or node faults for the three cluster ring topologies are also analyzed. Then we provide simulation results to verify the developed theoretical models.