Patent ID: 8868807

Claim:
A communication system comprising: a bus; a master node; and a plurality of slave nodes communicably coupled to the master node through the bus; wherein information is communicated on the bus as signals, each of the signals having an electrical dominant level thereon and an electrical recessive level thereon, the electrical dominant level being asserted on the bus in priority to the electrical recessive level; at least one of the plurality of slave nodes is constructed as at least one autonomous communicating slave node that autonomously transmits data without receiving data associated with the at least one autonomous communication slave node, the at least one slave node being configured to autonomously transmit a corresponding header indicative of data required to be autonomously transmitted via the bus; the master node is configured to transmit a corresponding header with an identification of data selected by the master node to be transmitted; one of the plurality of slave nodes including the data selected by the master node to be transmitted is configured to receive the corresponding header from the master node and transmit the received header from the master node and the data selected by the master node to be transmitted following the received header; each of the master node and the at least one autonomous communicating slave node is configured to: detect that the bus is in an idle state when the electrical recessive level on the bus is continued for a predetermined period or more; transmit the corresponding header via the bus after detection of the bus being in the idle state; and perform arbitration on the bus based on the corresponding header.