The automotive industry is under pressure. The CO₂ emission generated by cars shall be reduced. In ­Europe, Euro 6 regulations will replace Euro 5 in 2014, and the average CO₂ emissions limit will fall to 95 g/km by 2020. Chinese 4 standards, similar to Euro 4, came into force in China in 2011 and the city of ­Beijing is planning to adopt Chinese 5. In the USA, corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) requirements for passenger cars will increase from 30,4 mpg to 37,8 mpg by 2016 and 50,6 mpg by 2025. Transceiver will help carmakers respond to changing new-car legislation in major markets worldwide, aiming to save fuel and reduce emissions.
To meet these increasingly stringent regulations, while electronic control units (ECU) become more complex and consume increasingly energy, carmakers are pursuing many ways to improve fuel efficiency. However, most of the ECUs are powered even in times, when their functions are not required. To be serious, many of the ECUs are needed quite rarely. This means, partial networking is a solution: All not required ECUs are going into sleep mode and can be awaked individually, when their function is really needed.
A consortium of carmakers and semiconductor manufacturers has pre-developed a specification for high-speed, low-power transceiver chips with additional partial wake-up functionality. These transceivers will be compliant to ISO 11898-2 and ISO 11898-5. The consortium has already submitted its specification to the International Standardization Organization (ISO), which will review the submitted document and publish it as ISO 11898-6 international standard. The ISO process for the development of international standards of the CAN partial networking specifications has already been started. As chairman of the consortia, C&S group has actively contributed to establish the requirements for CAN transceiver with selective wake-up functionalities. In the related ISO task force, C&S acts as the chief-editor in order to guarantee a smooth adopting process when converting the document into an ISO standard.

The first silicon, ...

Although the partial wake-up standard is under development, the first chipmakers have announced CAN transceiver chips with this functionality.
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Keyboards with CAN

Miunske (Germany) has developed a series of CAN-connectable keyboards. They are specially suited for commercial vehicles. The allowed operating voltage reaches from 9 V to 30 V. There are keyboards with four, six, or twelve elements each selectable as either switch or indicator. The products distinguish through a homogeneous illumination of the symbols. Furthermore multi-clor LEDs are used to offer a choice for symbol color for day- and nightlight. An integrated light sensor measures the intensity of the ambient light and intuitively adjusts the luminance of the symbols. The minimal and maximal light luminance is configurable. Also the operating voltage is measured. Optionally operating voltage and light intensity values can be transferred via CAN.
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HMI device for winter-service

Fiedler (Germany) has developed the FMS unit, which combines joystick and display functionality. The CAN-connectable unit is in particular suitable for winter-service vehicles. It can control any kind of add-on devices, e.g. “Streuer” and brushes. Besides the color display, the HMI device provides optionally a camera and a joystick. The software detects automatically the installed options and enables the related software modules.
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Safety I/O sub-system

Belden’s Lumberg Automation division (Germany) has developed safety I/O modules connected via the company’s LioN-Link field-bus system and linkable to CANopen and DeviceNet networks. The recently introduced output module (0942 UEM 612) fulfills protection class requirements IP67 and has four digital M12 slots with a higher limit on the output voltage permitting 2 A per line and 6 A in total. These outputs are designed for safety-related applications up to performance level D (as defined in the new Machinery Directive) making this I/O module particularly suitable for failsafe control of actuators or – following a complete switch-off of the 24‑V output power supply – reliable emergency off-functions.
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Storing power is complicated and expensive, but often, especially far away from the regular power grids there is no way around large batteries for grid-independent electricity consumers. It would make more sense to use the electricity when it is generated. This becomes possible with the help of a smart energy management system.
For fruits, cereals and leguminous plants such as oranges, wheat, beans and olives to grow in hot and dry climates, they must be irrigated regularly. And often the water used comes from deep wells. In Egypt, many farmers currently use diesel generators to water their fields. A model project in Upper Egypt, in Wadi El Natrun, shows that other methods are possible. Here, a photovoltaic stand-alone system takes care of irrigating a wheat field. Concentrator photovoltaic system (CPV) modules – which, due to their higher degree of effectiveness and their particular construction, require far less space than traditional PV modules – supply the energy, while Fresnel lenses concentrate the rays of the sun onto pinhead-sized multi-junction solar cells. With the aid of a tracking motor, the CPV cells, which are attached to a pillar, follow the sun precisely to achieve an optimized yield of solar light. They supply the energy for a submersible pump that pumps the water up from a well that is 105  ft deep and for a small desalination unit that satisfies farmers’ potable water requirements. The CPV cells also supply the energy for the PV-module trackers, the monitoring and control system and an air-conditioning unit that cools the utility room of the facility.
In order to make the complete system as inexpensive as possible, the developers largely did without expensive batteries for the intermediate storage of the energy gained from the solar cells. “Where there is no public power grid, the PV systems currently operate cost-effectively, due to their low operating costs. The only problems are posed by the high initial costs of the investment, in which the batteries play a substantial role,“ explained Jakob Wachtel from the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE (Germany). “By immediately using the largest share of the energy that is generated we can save on expensive storage media capacities,“ adds his colleague, Alexander Schies. A sophisticated energy management system monitors the generation of energy and ensures that it immediately goes where it is needed at the moment, such as the submersible pump to fill up the water reservoir, the irrigation pump when it is time to irrigate the field or the desalination unit.
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