It is a low-cost single-wire serial protocol that supports communications up to 19.2 Kbit/s with a maximum bus length of 40 metres (131.2 ft).
European car manufacturers started using different serial communication technologies, which led to compatibility problems.
In September 2003, version 2.0 was introduced to expand capabilities and make provisions for additional diagnostics features.
[6] The primary and secondary nodes are typically microcontrollers, but may be implemented in specialized hardware or ASICs in order to save cost, space, or power.
Current uses combine the low-cost efficiency of LIN and simple sensors to create small networks.
[7] The LIN bus is an inexpensive serial communications protocol, which effectively supports remote application within a car's network.
In the late 1990s the Local Interconnect Network (LIN) Consortium was founded by five European automakers, Mentor Graphics (Formerly Volcano Automotive Group) and Freescale (Formerly Motorola, now NXP).
In September 2003 version 2.0 was introduced to expand configuration capabilities and make provisions for significant additional diagnostics features and tool interfaces.
The protocol’s main features are listed below: Data is transferred across the bus in fixed-form messages of selectable lengths.
The master task transmits a header that consists of a break signal followed by synchronization and identifier fields.
[9] A message contains the following fields:[9] The LIN specification was designed to allow very cheap hardware-nodes being used within a network.
[11] In today’s car networking topologies, microcontrollers with either UART capability or dedicated LIN hardware are used.
The LIN-Master uses one or more predefined scheduling tables to start the sending and receiving to the LIN bus.
After a specified timeout, the nodes enter sleep mode and will be released back to active state by a WAKEUP frame.
This is used to ensure that listening LIN nodes with a main-clock differing from the set bus baud rate in specified ranges will detect the BREAK as the frame starting the communication and not as a standard data byte with all values zero (hexadecimal 0x00).
LIN slaves running on RC oscillator will use the distance between a fixed amount of rising and falling edges to measure the current bit time on the bus (the master's time normal) and to recalculate the internal baud rate.
Various vehicle (automotive) connectivity buses: The LIN specification v2.2A (2010) was transcribed into the ISO 17987 family of official standards documents.