DESIGN OF A CUSTOM ASIC INCORPORATING CAN™ AND 1 ...

entire electrical system of automotive vehicles. The correct implementation of the wire harness
represents one of the most expensive and technically challenging aspects of vehicle design.
This paper presents the design and simulation of a full custom ASIC conjoining two
robust, serial protocols, 1 – Wire® and CAN, that can provide a rugged, reliable
communications backbone for wearable medical technology devices as well as advanced
vehicular technologies. There are numerous devices that use either CAN or 1 – Wire® for
communication. By conjoining these two serial bus protocols this will allow data exchange
between an almost unlimited number of devices.
There are many benefits to the use of serial communication for wearable medical
technology and advanced vehicular communications. First, serial communication allows the
transfer of data between two computers, two master devices, a master and a slave device, etc.
Therefore, it is very flexible. Serial communication also allows one to interface with a PC either
during development and/or in the field. Another major benefit of serial protocols is the low pin
count; communication can be established with just one I/O pin, compared to eight or more for
parallel communications. Finally, most physiological characteristics are monitored at relatively
slow rates allowing for lower speed communication protocols to be effective. This makes serial
communications ideal for wearable medical devices.
The remainder of this dissertation is organized as follows: Chapter 2 describes the 1 –
Wire® communication protocol, Chapter 3 describes the CAN communication protocol,
Chapter discusses the challenges of interfacing CAN and 1 – Wire® communication protocols,
Chapter 5 describes the interface of CAN and 1 – Wire® communication protocols, Chapter 6
3