Different Types Of Communication Protocols Or Network Topology

Hello guys, welcome back to my blog. In this article, I will discuss the different types of communication protocols or network topology used in communication.

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Different Types Of Communication Protocols

The different types of communication protocols are:

I²/SPI
RS-232 and RS-485
Local interconnect network (LAN)
Mod-bus
FlexRay
Controller area network (CAN)
Ethernet and TCP/IP
MOST

Let’s discuss it one by one.

01. I²/SPI (Serial Peripheral Interface)

These protocols are developed for communication between integrated circuits(ICs) within the context of one printed circuit board. These are acceptable for this purpose and they may likely be robust enough to handle communication over short distances. These are not recommended for communication between the circuit board. The integrated circuit manufacturers have offered “level-shifted” communications buses for the communication between battery monitoring integrated circuits(ICs).

These buses are level-shifted versions of well-known buses like SPI or I²C (Inter-Integrated Circuit). This communication is suitable to connect multiple integrated circuits across significant distances or more to implement are distributed BMS architecture. Therefore, this communication protocol is used for communication between ICs in the circuit board.

02. RS-232 and RS-485

RS-232 is developed for point-to-point communication as opposed to bus or star topology. The maximum cable length will be limited to 15 meters until and unless a special low capacitance cable is used. Many controllers will include a UART to support RS 232 and many resources will exist for communication between embedded controllers and PCs for development and debugging.

The dedicated wire is required for both transmitter and receiver directions. RS-232 will use Single-ended signaling. This will make RS- 232 unable to reject old ages that are induced on the signal line and susceptible to ground offsets. To overcome these challenges high voltages are used(12v).

The various embedded systems which are operating at 5V or less these old edges are generated by a transceiver like MAX 232 by using a charge pump converted to produce 12V as output. RS-232 must be always combined with additional services in a higher layer to ensure that errors in transmission are detected. The flow control schemes like software flow control using XON/XOFF or hardware flow control using RTS/CTS handshaking are used.

Higher speeds of devices mean that buffer overflows are less common but flow control is required for a slower operation like flash programming. The RS232 Will implement the OSI physical layers. RS-485 will use Identical timing parameters but with differential signaling compared to RS-232.

03. Local interconnect network (LAN)

The local interconnected network is developed to provide inexpensive Serial communications protocol in the automotive application in which CAN Is judged to be too expensive to all components for which OEMs wanted to add networking capability. LIN needs a master-slave to an apology in which slaves are ASICs that do not require a microcontroller core. The data rates are limited at 19.2 kbit/s. A local interconnect network is a common choice for simple, low bandwidth sensor integration.

04. Modbus

Modbus is an application layer messaging protocol that describes communications between 2 devices. Lower levels can be implemented in multiple ways, The most common being RS-485, TCP/IPI ethernet. Modbus can be used in control and network of different industrial and commercial products. It will allow for a limited number of operations to be performed over the network.

The information in Modbus linked systems will be transferred by using Modbus registers. Modbus needs master-slave implementation. The transactions will be initiated by the device known as the client and the responding device is called the server.

05. Controller area network (CAN)

The controller area network (CAN), revealed in the 1980s by Bosch, has found extensive choice in the automotive industry and is also employed in industrial purposes as well, especially when used with the CANopen protocol defining higher layers of the network model. In the OSI model, CAN designates the physical and data to link layers.

The new CANopen stack implements the network through application layers. CAN provides for high-speed communication providing near-real-time performance for many kinds of signals and offering high robustness to EMI.

When employed in control systems or automotive applications, CAN networks are normally referenced to earth ground. CAN nodes should be able of operating with a limited ground offset voltage between different nodes on the bus. CAN uses the message ID to define the relative priority of each message being transmitted on the network.

This can be used to solve conflicts between interfering messages if busloads are high. Vital communication links such as power modes and safety interlocks should use a high-priority message to guarantee that they are not interrupted by lower-priority information.

06. FlexRay

It is a new protocol that will be developed exclusively for automotive applications. It has been designed to allow increased speed and to overcome limitations that are associated with CAN, named as, lack of deterministic timing, redundancy, fault tolerance, and time-triggered behavior.

The higher data rates have somewhat limited usefulness for battery applications but the other improvements contribute greatly to robustness and bring various advantages for safety-related systems like batteries. At present, the use of FlexRay is not expanded beyond the automotive industry. The requirements of battery management do not require at this time require the advanced features of FlexRay.

07. Ethernet and TCP/IP

Ethernet is the most popular protocol defining both the physical layer and the data link layer, employed for residential and commercial computer networks, and is driving to see increased usage in industrial control networks as well. Ethernet has evolved into a good option for bandwidth-intensive but non-safety crucial communications. Ethernet implements the data link layer and is normally coupled with 10/100/1000BASE-T as the physical layer.

Higher layers in computer networking typically utilize Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP) for transport and network layers, and have moved to industrial Ethernet as well and will have some significance for industrial battery systems.

TCP was not originally intended for use in real-time applications due to the requirement for acknowledgments and the priority of accuracy (packets must arrive without error and in the form in which they are sent) over speed. User Diagram Protocol (UDP) is favored when real-time performance is pre-138 A Systems Approach to Lithium-Ion Battery Management Communications 139 ferred.

In battery systems in which responses are needed in tens to hundreds of milliseconds, a real-time communications topology is absolutely preferred.

08. MOST

MOST stands for media-oriented system transport it is a high-speed network (multimedia network) that is used to transfer data such as audio, video signals. This type of protocol is used in the media.

These are the different types of communication protocols. I hope this article may help you all a lot. Thank you for reading. If you have any doubts related to this article “types of communication protocols”, then comment below.

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Chetan Shidling

Automotive | Technical Blogger | Engineer | Content Creator

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