ISO (the International Organization for Standardization) is a worldwide federation. As its name implies, ISO provides international standards which are prepared and drafted by technical committees. Each member of the ISO, who is interested in the subject for whom a technical committee has been established, has the right to participate in the process of standardization of the corresponding subject.
The ISO 11898 standard, titled “Road vehicles – Controller area network (CAN), was first published in 1993, followed in 1995 by an amendment that describes the extended frame (see also Chapter 4.6 - Extended CAN Protocol). The first edition of ISO 11898-2, together with ISO 11898-1, replaces ISO 11898:1991, which has been technically revised.
ISO 11898 consists of the following parts:
- Data link layer and physical signaling
- High-speed medium access unit
- Low-speed, fault-tolerant, medium dependent interface
- Time-triggered communication
The ISO 11898 standards are available as a download through ISO’s website at http://www.iso.org. These documents provide an (almost complete) description of the CAN standard and even though the contents are sometimes rather sparse, it makes for an interesting reading, considering that good literature on CAN was hardly available up until now. The downside to the ISO documents, however, is that the download comes with a hefty price tag.