LIN (Local Interconnect Network) is the communication protocol for a low-speed network to which all comfort and convenience applications in the car are connected.
Instead of every air conditioning vent, electrical seat motor and sunroof being individually wired point-to-point to its own switches, only one wire can connect up to 16 separate points using „LIN“.
LIN can be used for every application which has no demand for high data rates.
With the help of LIN we are able to develop distributed networks within the car. LIN has the potential to cover all applications which cannot be directly connected to CAN because of high costs. Therefore it is necessary to bring the costs of LIN modules to a level, which is far below CAN. Up to now this was only possible with state machines. That kind of solution is efficient, robust and cheap, but it has the disadvantage that it’s only proven for one application and therefore not flexible. Changes are difficult to implement and can only be envisaged with a high effort and development time. Conventional MCU architectures are flexible, but LIN and application influence each other. These solutions don’t cover most applications at the cost level that we need for LIN
Melexis has developed for LIN a completely new MCU concept, which combines the efficiency, robustness and cost level of a state machine and on the other side the flexibility of a conventional MCU solution by separating the processing of the LIN protocol and the application.
Products which are realized using this MCU concept are available. The future of LIN has now started with a new progress of integration of LIN applications. It offers a very low cost solution with an extremely high level of flexibility. |