What is CAN XL?

CAN XL (Controller Area Network Extra Long) is an emerging technology in the CAN industry developed by the CAN in Automation (CiA) Special Interest Group CAN XL. Developed as an addition to ISO 11898-1, the key goal of CAN XL was to increase the bandwidth of CAN to over 10 Mbit/s, while retaining the reliability and collision handling CAN is known for. Depending on impedance on the bus, CAN XL is now able to achieve speeds exceeding 20 Mbit/s. With CAN XL frames allowing up to 2048 bytes compared to previous limits of 8 or 64 bytes, CAN XL is perfect for applications such as ECU flashing.

In this course we will cover the basics of CAN XL, the new features accompanying higher bitrate options, and how CAN XL interacts with CAN FD and CAN CC on a mixed bus. It is recommended to have a general understanding of CAN and CAN FD before taking this course.

Below are a few of the new features of CAN XL:

• Support for bitrates up to 20 Mbit/s or higher.
• Enhanced DLC protection ensures data integrity, prevents errors, and improves reliability.
• Resolved an issue in CAN FD in which a node setting the sample-point at a different percentage in the arbitration bits could cause an error.
• New fields in Control Field
  • Virtual CAN Network ID or VCID, allows a physical CAN XL network to be divided into several logical networks by ID.
  • Service Data Unit Type or SDT can be used to indicate the type of protocol embedded in the data field.
  • Acceptance Field or AF allowing support for both content-based addressing and node-based addressing.
• Error signaling can be disabled for CAN-XL frames when the CAN driver operates in CAN-XL SIC mode. In this mode, signals are transmitted using a push-pull mechanism, which is incompatible with simultaneous error frames.