Abstract: The development and testing of the controller area network (CAN) bus between automotive electronic control units (ECU) are accomplished using professional CAN testing equipment. The CANoe software and its dedicated hardware interfaces provided by the German company Vector have essentially become the industry-standard tools. However, the high cost and limited availability of the dedicated hardware restrict their adoption among small-to-medium-sized teams and research institutions. Aiming to this industry challenge, this paper proposes a low-cost CAN communication testing system developed based on the MATLAB/Simulink platform, which enables bidirectional data migration between general-purpose CAN devices and CANoe software through virtual channels. This allows the retention of CANoe's development, simulation, diagnosis, and testing functionalities without relying on Vector's dedicated hardware. Focusing on the performance of the communication testing system in terms of key metrics such as CAN message period stability, frame integrity, throughput, communication latency, and long-term operational reliability, tests were conducted at a baud rate of 500 kbps under varying load ratios and over extended operation periods. Experimental results demonstrate that the system performs comparably to the Vector hardware solution across all metrics, while reducing hardware costs by approximately 60%~80%. This provides a low-cost, accessible, and professional-grade implementation path for CAN bus testing in automotive ECU communication systems.

Key words: controller area network; CANoe; virtual channel; data migration; general-purpose CAN devices; low-cost

摘要： 汽车电子控制单元（ECU）间的控制器局域网（CAN）总线开发、测试，均基于专业的 CAN 测试设备完成。其中，德国 Vector 公司提供的 CANoe 软件及其专用硬件接口，已基本 成为行业标准工具。但其专用硬件价格昂贵、资源较少，限制了在中小型团队和科研机构的 普及。针对这一行业痛点，文章提出了一种基于 MATLAB/Simulink 平台开发的低成本 CAN 通信测试系统，通过虚拟通道实现通用 CAN 设备与 CANoe 软件之间的双向数据迁移，实现 了在不依赖 Vector 专用硬件的前提下，保留 CANoe 软件的开发、仿真、诊断与测试功能。文 章围绕通信测试系统在 CAN 报文周期稳定性、帧完整性、吞吐量、通信延时、长期运行可靠 性等关键指标测试方面的表现，在波特率为 500 kbps 下进行了不同负载率与长期运行测试。 实验结果表明，该系统在各项指标上均与 Vector 硬件方案相当，且硬件成本可降低约 60%～ 80%，为汽车 ECU 通信系统提供了低成本、可普及、专业级的 CAN 总线测试实现路径。

关键词: 控制器局域网；CANoe；虚拟通道；数据迁移；通用 CAN 设备；低成本