Controller area network as the security of the vehicles

Proceedings of the International Conference on Emerging Trends in Engineering and Management (ICETEM14)
30 – 31, December 2014, Ernakulam, India
76
CONTROLLER AREA NETWORK AS THE SECURITY OF
THE VEHICLES
Aromal C M1
, Jini Kuriakose2
, Sujith Kumar P S3
1, 2, 3
Department of CSE, SNGCE, Kadayiruppu, Kerala, India
ABSTRACT
Automobile industry is buzzing about avoidingvehicle theft in the present. By making use of the GPS feature in
the mobile phone the design and development of a theft control system for an automobile can be achieved. In this system
mobile phone used is embedded in the vehicle with an interfacing to Engine Control Module (ECM) through CAN
(Controller Area Network) Bus. This in turn is communicated to the ECM. By using the GPS feature of mobile phone the
owner of the vehicle being stolen can stop the vehicle and this information is also used by the owner for future
processing. The owner can send a message to the mobile which is embedded in the vehicle which is stolen and in turn
can control the vehicles engine by locking the working of the engine. Through CAN Bus, the developed system accept
the message send by the owner and this is broadcasted to the vehicles network. The locked engine can be unlocked only
by owner by sending the message again. Also as soon as the engine is locked all the windows of the vehicle get locked
and a poisonous gas comes through AC and thief becomes unconscious. This prevents the thief from escaping in any
way. The goal behind the design and the system is to develop security for vehicles.
Keywords: AC Control Unit, Controller Area Network Bus, Engine Control Unit, Power Window Control Unit, Vehicle
Address.
1. INTRODUCTION
For engine management, door and roof control, air conditioning and lightening and the entertainment control,
automobile industry uses Controller Area Network (CAN)[1]
. At present, all car manufactures started implementing CAN
based vehicle automation.
A vehicle tracking system combines installation of an electronics device with computer software to enable the
owner to tracks the vehicle location. With the use of technologies data collected from the fields, information regarding
stolen vehicle and its real time location can be identified. And the information sends to the police or systems operating
center. Tracking systems are also used to update the data. And modern vehicle tracking systems commonly use GPS
technology[2]
. The vehicle information can be viewed on electronic maps via the internet or specialized software.
Car theft is increased in last few years. There are many technologies that can be used to protect our car from
thieves. But all the technologies are broken by the thieves. Controller Area Network can be used to avoid this situation.
2. CONTROLLER AREA NETWORK
As a consequence of constant growth in technology, today automobile comply with digital control systems. At
present vehicle contains large number of electronic control system and Electronic Control Units (ECUs). This growth of
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF COMPUTER ENGINEERING &
TECHNOLOGY (IJCET)
ISSN 0976 – 6367(Print)
ISSN 0976 – 6375(Online)
Volume 5, Issue 12, December (2014), pp. 76-81
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77
automotive electronics is because of the customer’s wish for better safety, great comfort, other requirements like
improved emission control and reduced fuel consumption. It is important to control one or more electronic subsystem to
realize various functions. For this purpose Electronics Control Units are deployed in automobiles.
Many signals are passed between various Electronics Control Units embedded inside the car, while driving.
Also, output signals from an ECU contain information about the current state of the car. Recent automobiles can consist
up to eighty ECUs sensing and this rapid and complex exchange of signals ensure proper functioning of the car[1]
.
CAN is the short form of Controller Area Network[3]
. The first idea on CAN bus was first developed by
engineers at Robert Bosch Gmbh in Germany in early 1980s. The early focus is to develop a communication system
between a numbers of Electronic Control Units (ECUs). Now a day’s majority of vehicles use CAN bus. CAN bus
designed specifically for automotive applications but today the range of CAN bus is increasing to industrial automation,
medical equipment etc.
CAN is a serial bus system especially designed for networking intelligent devices as well as sensors and
actuators within a system or sub-system which uses message oriented transmission protocol.
CAN is a serial bus system with multi-master capabilities which is all the nodes connected to the CAN bus are
able to transmit data and CAN nodes can request the simultaneously. Here there is no addressing of subscribersor stations
in the conventional sense but here prioritized messages are transmitted. The sender node broadcasts the message to all
other CAN nodes and each node decides on the basis of the identifier received whether it should process the message or
not and the identifier also determines the priority that the message enjoys in competition for bus access.
A. Data Exchange Principle
Whenever a CAN node send a message no station are addressed, but the content will designed by a unique
identifier. The identifier is important for bus allocation achieve several stations are competing for bus since it defines not
only the content but also priority of the message. Figure 1 shows the basic data exchange in CAN Bus.
Fig 1: basic data exchange in can bus
If one node wants to send a message to one or more nods, it passes the message and their identities to the
assigned CAN chip (“Prepare”). The data is constructed and transmitted by the can chip. Whenever the can chip gets the
bus allocation (“Send”) all the other nods on the CAN network becomes receives of the data/message (“Receive”).
Each node in the network correctly performs an acceptance test to determine. Whether the received message is
relevant for them or not (“Select”).if the data/message is relevant for the node it will make further process (“Accept”),
otherwise ignores it (“Ignore”).
B. Message Format
Fig 2: standard message format

78
The CAN protocol support two types of message frame format one is standard format and other is extended
format and the difference is that the length of the identifier (ID)[3]
. In standard format the length of the identifier is 11 bit
and length of the extended format is 29 bits. Figure 4 represent the message of format of the standard format.
In standard format message starts with SOF (Start of Frame) and an “arbitration filed” contains the identifier and the
“RTR” (Remote Transmission.
Request) bit that indicates whether it is a request frame or a data frame.
The “control field “contains the IDE (identifies extension) bit that indicates whether it is standard or extended
format, for future extension a bit is reserved , and the next four bit for a count of the data bytes in the data field.
The next is “data field” which ranges from 0-8 bytes in length.
The next is “CRC field” which is used for detecting bit error in frame.
The ACK field comprises the ACK slot and the ACK delimiter (I recessive bit).
The “end of frame” indicates the end of the message.
The next is the “intermission” which is the minimum number of bit periods separating consecutive message and the
bus remains ideal when there is no following bus access by any station.
Before sending the message to the bus the binary value of message is converted in to a serial bit stream called
CAN message since CAN controller allow only bit stream data and the bit stream data is passed to CAN transceivers
(TX) and the transceiver converts the bit stream in to voltage values which is send over the can bus line
Fig 3: detailed data exchange in can bus

79
At the reception side, voltage values are converted in to bit stream by the transceivers and sent over(RX) to the
CAN then convert the bit stream in to binary data and the control unit then convert the serial binary values back in to
messages.
Each control unit has an additional CAN memory area for send and receives messages. These two sections are
called send section and receive section. And the CAN module is connected to the control unit via the send mailbox or
receive mailbox which is normally integrated in the chip of the control unit microcontroller as shown in the Figure 3.
3. EXISTING SYSTEM
The existing system allows detecting the threat before the vehicle is driven away and will help to track the
vehicle only through the internet and it done by GPS (Global Positioning Satellites).
Drawbacks
Existing systems provides only a broad layout of the geographical address and does not provide the streetwise
address.
Existing system provides only tracking of the vehicle.
No technologies to control the speed and engine.
No technologies to catch the thieves.
4. PROPOSED SYSTEM
The design and development of this system for an automobile which is being used to prevent /control the theft
of a vehicle. The developed system is an embedded system which makes use of different technologies such as GSM,
GPS, etc. The system can be simply controlled by sending a message to the system from the mobile phone of the vehicle
owner who is sitting in a remote place and the engine of the vehicle can be controlled by interfacing with CAN.
When the vehicle is being stolen, A message is sent is the interfacing GSM modem that is interfaced with the
ECU which is installed in the vehicle by reading the information received by the mobile the engine gets locked
automatically and the speed of the vehicle comes to zero. At the same time all the windows of the vehicle gets locked and
a poisonous gas comes through AC valves and the thief becomes unconscious. This prevents the thief from escaping.
When the vehicle is stolen, the designed systems will help to know the exact location of the vehicle by using GPS by
sending a message to the mobile which is embedded in the vehicle.
When a cellular network is not available the designed unit stores information in internal memory and transmits
the information to the serves when the network becomes available again. As we are using mobile technologies in to the
embedded system the designed unit is very cost effective.
5. THEFT CONTROL AND CATCH UNIT
The theft control & catch unit retrieves a geographical address; control the movement of the vehicle by locking
& unlocking of engine and also provide a mechanism to catch the thieves only up on receipt of a predefined code from
the owner, who may be at a remote place by using mobile phone technology.
Design & Development of TC2
U
The proposed system consists of 3 modules
1. Address retrieval
2. Engine controlling
3. Handling thief
The TC2
U communicate with other control unit through CAN Bus. Figure 4 shows the overview of the proposed system.

80
Fig 4: overview of the proposed system
5.1 Address Retrieval
The location of the vehicle can he retrieve only by sending a message is special message should be set before
deploying the system here reverse geocoding process is used to get the streetwise address[4]
. In order to get the streetwise
address we must give the latitude and longitude of the vehicle. For that latitude and longitude of the vehicle is to be
obtained from the satellites. The obtained latitude and longitude is used for computing address by use of geocoder[5]
(Geocoding translates a human readable address into latitude, longitude pair whereas reverse geocoding does the
opposite of that).Figure5 shows the address retrieval of the vehicle.
Fig 5: address retrieval of the vehicle

81
5.2 Engine Controlling
The owner can either start or stop the working. The engine based up on receiving the location of the vehicle.
This module receives a message from the owners and performs further action. Based on the pre-defined message the
engine can be locked or unlocked.
To stop the vehicle, owner sends a message to the system placed inside the vehicle which will stop the flow of
fuel through the fuel injector of the vehicle that will help to reduce the speed of vehicle to zero. And the engine can be
unlocked by sending another message[6]
. All there performed with the help of CAN bus.
The system also contain another design parameter which is four authenticating the genuine nature of the
message. The system will process the message only if it is from the owner. That is only the owner have the control over
the ignition of the engine which means locking cannot be performed by others even if the code is known. The main thing
focusing here in this design is that controlling the ignition of the engine by owner being at a remote place by sending a
message
5.3 Handling thief
This module integrate with engine controlling module which will work based on message send by the owner of
the vehicle. Whenever the engine get locked based on the owner’s message, at the same time a poisonous gas (which is
placed in the AC control unit before deploying the system) comes through AC and thief become unconscious. This will
prevents the thief from escaping in any way. The poisonous gas is embedded in the AC control unit before deploying the
system. Whenever the engine get locked a message will pass the CAN bus to the power window control unit in which
will help to lock all the windows of the vehicle and the message will pass to the AC control unit[7][8]
make a poisonous
gas to comes through the valves of AC that will make the thief to an unconscious stage and help to catch the thief. As we
are using the CAN bus technology all these things are happens at the same time.
6. CONCLUSION
The proposed system can be making use in any automobile. As it is a mobile based system it is less expensive
and the working of the engine can be controlled being at a remote place. The system control the vehicle engine when it
receives a message from owner through CAN bus. The transfer of data from one unit to another unit is reliable and
efficient as CAN bus is used as in vehicle network. The system handles different functions such as getting location
details, locking vehicle engine by stopping fuel flow in to the engine, making the thief to an unconscious stage,
encompasses some advantage of the system. As the system uses mobile technologies, mobile network is essential for the
functioning of the system.
REFERENCES
[1] CAN in Automation (CiA) , Controller Area Network (CAN) , Available: http://www.can-cia.org/
[2] Ambade Shruti Dinkar and S.A Shaaikh," Design and Implementation Of Vehicle Tracking System Using
GPS ", Journal of Information Engineering and Application, ISSN 2224-5758, Vol 1, No.3, 2011.
[3] Controller Area Network, Available: http://www.ni.com/white-paper/2732/en/
[4] Rohitaksha K , Madhu C G , Nalini B G and Nirupama C V, "Android Application for Vehicle Theft
Prevention and Tracking System", International Journal of Computer Science and Information
Technologies, Vol. 5 (3) , 2014 , 3754-3758
[5] ReverseGeocoding Available:
http://www.raymondcamden.com/2013/3/5/Simple-Reverse-GeocodingExample
[6] Manjunath T K, Andrews Samraj, N Maheswai and Sharmila Chidaravalli, " Locking and Unlocking of
Theft Vehicle Using CAN ", Proceedings of 2013 International Conference on Green High Performance
Computing.
[7] How can air conditioning works, Available:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmpybbtxQmM
[8] Fund`amentals of the automotive cab in climate control system, Available:
http://www.edn.com/design/automotive/4403883/Fundamentals-of-the-automotive-cabin-climate-control-system.
[9] Shivam Wadhwa and Kusum Dangi, “Location Based Store and Forward Packet Routing Algorithm for
Wireless Body Area Networks: A Survey”, International Journal of Computer Engineering & Technology
(IJCET), Volume 5, Issue 1, 2014, pp. 153 - 161, ISSN Print: 0976 – 6367, ISSN Online: 0976 – 6375.

Controller area network as the security of the vehicles

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