Integer Formulations for the Message Scheduling Problem on Controller Area Networks

In this work, the problem of scheduling messages in a controller area network (CAN) is presented. CAN is an important type of hard real-time distributed system, which is used to control embedded devices, connected to a main processor through a serial communication infrastructure. The main problem in CAN concerns the optimal allocation of messages in the bus field connecting processor nodes. We propose linear integer programming formulations for this problem. Our objective is to find a message schedule minimizing the time for dispatching of messages with high priority. We show that the. problem is NP-hard, and present results of the mathematical programming models for a set of instances defined over subsets of the SAE Benchmark for Automotive Systems.