CAN-based monitoring in refrigerated transports

Abstract

Perishable food products such as vegetables, fruit, meat or fish require refrígerated transports. Effective cold management is fundamental for maintaining the quality of these products along the supply chain. The use of standardized CAN technology improves monitoring transports ensurlng the inter-operability of the system. A variety of sensors and actuators can be integrated in the CAN. Information provided by sensors is exchanged; alarms are thggered in case of anomaly data. Also devices for fleet management, tachograph and satellite Communications may be a part of complete system. Technologies such as Wireless Sensor Networks or Radio Frequency Identification may be implemented in an on-line monitoring environment in the future. Thus, the challenge is interconnecting these heterogeneous systems and harmonlzation of the different interfaces.