Matt Ruff
Freescale Semiconductor

Since the introduction of automotive networking in the mid-1980s, the quantity of electronics embedded in automobiles has increased significantly. With this increase in electronic content and complexity, many companies developed proprietary networking protocols to ease implementation and reduce costs while meeting the needs of designers and the consumer. This automotive networking usually relied on standardized serial communications hardware, such as Universal Asynchronous Receiver Transmitters (UART). These UART-based protocols (UBPs) often shared common characteristics, but were rarely compatible. To meet the drive for an industry-standard UART protocol, the Local Interconnect Network (LIN) Consortium was founded representing the next major step forward in the evolution of automotive networking.