This paper mainly studies the feasible data protocols of control area
network (CAN) for the avionics network systems. The objective is to
assess the potentiality of CAN systems for the line/shop replaceable unit of avionics. The round-way communications between the master node and
all other nodes are crucial for network systems of avionics. An approach
with appropriate data protocol is proposed with the group master
mechanism, or the indirect round-way communication. It can make the
arbitrations, masks, filters, and other parameters of nodes in CAN bus
reassigned on-line. The proposed approach will be implemented. The
wire connections of CAN systems need not be changed by this approach.
The analyses and measurements of the communication efficiency with
different bytes of data filed are experimented. The results show that the
bandwidth consumed approximates 0.18% with 8 bytes in a transmission if
the trigger time is 1 second. It is intuitive that the bandwidth can be saved if the arbitrations of CAN nodes are encoded with less bit sizes. Although other approaches could be found in literature, the proposed approach for round-way communications in CAN is original as it is based on the mechanism of indirect round-way communications.