Arbitration, like clock synchronization, is required only if more than one master is used in the system. A master may start transmission only if the bus is free. A DLN adapter and one or more other masters may generate a START condition within the minimum hold time, which results in a valid START condition on the bus. Arbitration is then required to determine which master will complete its transmission.
Arbitration proceeds bit by bit. During every bit, while SCL is HIGH, each master checks to see if the SDA level matches what it has sent. If at least one master outputs LOW, the SDA line will have the LOW level. If a master changes the state of the SDA line to HIGH, but the line stays in LOW, then this indicates that this master lost arbitration and it needs to back off.
The arbitration process may take many bits. More than one masters can even complete an entire transaction without error if their transmissions are identical.
A master that loses the arbitration can generate clock pulses until the end of the byte in which it loses the arbitration and can restart its transaction when the bus is free.
If a master can act as a slave and it loses arbitration during the addressing stage, it must switch immediately to its slave mode because the winning master may try to address it.
The following figure shows the arbitration procedure for the DLN adapter and the Master2 device. The moment when there is a difference between the DATA1 level and the actual level on the SDA line, the DLN adapter switches off the DATA1 output.
