The J1939 Safety Stack is the functional-safety extension of the SAE J1939 protocol for heavy-duty on- and off-highway vehicles and machinery. It implements the J1939 Safety Data Group (SDG, SAE J1939-76) so safety-relevant messages can be exchanged and validated on the same CAN network as standard J1939 traffic. It runs alongside the standard J1939 Stack.
Functional safety over J1939 (J1939-76)
The J1939 Safety Stack adds the Safety Data Group defined in SAE J1939-76: safety-relevant signals are protected with additional CRC, message counters and timeout supervision, so corruption, loss, delay or repetition of a safety message is detected and the receiver can react to a safe state. It lets a single ECU combine normal vehicle networking with safety functions on one bus.
Certification-ready
Engineered to support SIL 2 / SIL 3 (IEC 61508) and the related automotive and machinery safety standards, the J1939 Safety Stack is delivered with the documentation your own certification requires. Backed by 30+ years of embedded, CAN and functional-safety expertise, it is a dependable foundation for safety-related ECUs on J1939 networks.
Portable and hardware-independent
Delivered as a ready-to-integrate binary with a thin hardware abstraction layer, the J1939 Safety Stack runs on any MCU, any RTOS or bare metal, with no third-party dependencies. It works over classic CAN and CAN FD and is engineered for deterministic, real-time behaviour on the resource-constrained controllers used in vehicles and mobile machinery.
Applications
The J1939 Safety Stack is used where J1939 ECUs carry safety functions — engine and after-treatment safety, transmissions, safe body and chassis control, and off-highway machinery on trucks, buses, agricultural and construction equipment. It pairs with the standard J1939 Stack wherever standard vehicle networking and functional safety must share the same bus.
Standards and conformance
The J1939 Safety Stack implements SAE J1939-76 (functional-safety Safety Data Group) on top of the SAE J1939 family (J1939-21 transport, J1939-73 diagnostics, J1939-81 network management) and is designed to support SIL 2 / SIL 3 under IEC 61508. It is delivered as a ready-to-integrate binary with a documented API and a sample application, supported by the engineers who wrote it.
