Development of A Distributed Data Collection

System based on Embedded Ethernet

Arul Prabaar A, Brahmaandha Prabhu b
C-DAC, Noida, India
aruiprabahar@cdacnoida.in, brahmanandha@cdacnoida.in
Absnuc|- We describe a low cost distributed data collection
system based on embedded Ethernet. Embedded Ethernet is
nothing but a microcontroller which is able to communicate with
the network. Low cost microcontrollers have memory limitations,
and therefore, have limited connectivity options. Enabling a
microcontroller to communicate to a data communication
network would allow greater fexibility and enhance their usage
in several applications that require distributed data collection,
monitoring or controlling such applications.
Inde Term-Embedded Ethernet, UDP, TCP/IP.
I. INTRODUCTION
T he reason for acquiring distributed data is nothing but to
enhance the operations perfoned on the data remotely.
For example, PIR sensor (Passive Infa Red) is interfaced with
the microcontroller to collect the intrusion data. If the
microcontroller is capable of Etheret connectivity or some
other kind of data communication with exteral world, we can
monitor the secured premises for any intrusion fom the
remote location.
We target to develop a system which has the following
parts. Atmega16 microcontroller, a low cost 8-bit
microcontroller fom ATMEL, ENC28J60 Etheret controller
IC fom Microchip and a Parallax PIR sensor. Etheret is the
global standard for data communication. It is suitable to use
Etheret for distributed data collection system. TCP/IP
protocol suite is the basic sofware requirement for Etheret
communication. Etheret driver to control the operation of
Etheret controller is also required. Both Atmega16
microcontroller and ENC28J60 Etheret controller are having
SPI interface (Serial Peripheral Interface) and communication
between both takes place through SPI Interface. We have
limited our work to studying the implementation of distributed
data collection system for Surveillance monitoring and motion
detection based on PIR sensors.
The main contribution of our work is that we have shown
that it is possible to use an embedded Etheret device for
Surveillance monitoring application. This paper is organized
as follows, Section 2 discusses about basic system design.
Section 3 gives the details about development of Etheret
module. Application development over TCP/IP stack is given
in section 4. Section 5 comments on the perfonance of the
system. Section 6 gives ideas for fture work. Finally, the
paper is summarized and concluded in section 7.
II. BASIC SYSTEM DESIGN
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Figure I:Distributed daa collection system
Figure 1 shows the basic system diagram of the distributed
data collection system. The system uses LAN (Local Area
Network) infastructure as the backbone for distributed data
collection system. The microcontroller modules with PIR
sensors are called as sensor modules. The sensor modules are
connected to the LAN as nodes. A PC for data monitoring is
also connected to the same LAN network. A application
program to monitor the data fom sensors is running on the
PC. The sensor modules will be kept at different places like
Entrance of the building, rooms and hallways where LAN
cabling is available. As TCP/IP stack is ported in the
microcontroller, each sensor module acts as a true Etheret
device. The sensor modules are checking for PIR sensor data
and transmitting the data to the remote PC which is also
connected to Etheret.
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Figure 2: Hadware environment schematic
Figure 2 shows the hardware environment of the system. A
PIR sensor is interfaced with microcontroller. PIR sensor is
capable of detecting the infa red rays radiated fom human
body. PIR sensor is the basic building block of Surveillance
monitoring system which detects the human motion detection.
978-1-4244-9799-71111$26.00 20 11 IEEE
97
III. DEVELOPMENT OF ETHERET MODULE
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Figure 3: Design of Ethemet module using ENC28J60
Etheret controller is interfaced with an RJ-45 port through
an Etheret transformer IC for connection to an Etheret
network. The ENC28J60 is an IEEE 802.3 compatible
Etheret controller which supports one 10 BASE-T Etheret
port. The basic send ad receive fnctionalities of Etheret are
controlled by sending appropriate commands to the ENC28J60
and confguring the registers of ENC28J60 through SPI port.
Atregal6 microcontroller performs as SPI master and
ENC28J60 IC acts as SPI slave.
Etheret communication between the ATMEGA16A and
the PC is accomplished by porting TCP/IP stack on the
microcontroller and implementing User Datagram Protocol
(UDP) over the TCP/IP stack. The Remote PC IP address
(destination IP address), sensor module IP address (Source IP
address), destination port and source port are confgured on
the TCP/IP stack. The program which resides on the
microcontroller reads the data fom the PIR sensor and
encodes the same as UDP data packet (Figure 4). The program
initiates and performs all data exchange to and fom the
microcontroller, in UDP datagram format via ENC28J60
Etheret controller chip [1]. An application program on the
remote PC, handles the UDP communication fom PC side.
This program is responsible for monitoring PIR sensor data at
the remote location and taing necessary actions like making
alarm on and sending waring signal.
The A TMEGA 16A microcontroller communicates with the
remote PC by creating, interpreting, sending and receiving
UDP datagram packets. A UDP datagram packet is a sequence
of binary bits via the Etheret network. In the beginning of the
datagram packet, an IP header and an UDP header are there.
They contain information about the destination address, the
source address and the data checksum. Payload portion
contains the actual data fom sensor. FigA shows the generic
UDP datagram packet. UDP checksum calculation is handled
by the program running on microcontroller.
IV. APPLICA nON DEVELOPMENT
Figure 4: UDP Datagram Format
The UDP protocol is used for transmitting sensor data,
because of the datagram packet's compact size compared to
other transmission protocols, e.g. Transmission Control
Protocol (TCP). The application sofware on the
microcontroller reads the PIR sensor continuously. It formats
the UDP header and inserts the sensor data in the place of
UDP data and also calculates the UDP checksum. Finally it
hands over the formatted packet to the TCP/lP stack. TCP/IP
stack flls the required felds in IP header like source ip
address, destination ip address, source port no, destination port
no, length and checksum.
Etheret driver which resides on the microcontroller takes
the control over the packet and transmits the packet to
Etheret controller through SPI interface. Now Etheret
packet to be transmitted is stored in the transmit buffer of the
Etheret controller. By giving Transmit command to the
Etheret controller, the packet is sent over the Etheret.
Etheret controller takes care of the hardware level CRC
check.
Microcontroller
I nitialization
Read sensor
output
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Figure 5: Flow of events in the microcontroller program
The remote PC gets the PIR sensor data in terms of UDP
packet. The application program running on remote PC
monitors the UDP packets and if there any data higher than
threshold level, ensures the motion detection and raises the
alarm.
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V. PERFORMANCE OF THE SYSTEM
Figure 6: Original Hardware
The real picture of the data collection system developed by
us is given in fgure no 4 (without PIR sensor).
We constructed the system initially with P89C52
microcontroller. P89C52 microcontroller does not have SPI
port. We had to transfer the data fom the micro controller to
ENC28J60 bit by bit. It afected the system performance
heavily. We observed that the microcontroller took 6 ms to
reply back to a ping request.
We decided to use another microcontroller which has SPI
port. Atmega16 microcontroller was chosen. It supports SPI
Interface. In this case, Atmega16 Microcontroller is working
on 11.0592 Mz fequency. SPI Interface operates at around
5.5 Mz half of the SPI Master fequency. The sensor module
is able to reply back to a ping request within a millisecond and
it supports 10Mbps Etheret connection. We can connect this
hardware with the real world network. It can act as a true
etheret device. Although UDP is connection less protocol, it
is sufcient for the applications which are not critical.
VI. FUTUR WORK
We have developed an embedded Etheret module which is
capable of acquiring data fom various sensors and
transmitting the data to the remote server or PC for fher
processing. If we connect a temperature sensor with the
microcontroller, we can monitor the room temperature
remotely. If a light sensor is connected with the
microcontroller, Intelligent Lighting System can be made out
of this module.
Like these examples, different sensors can be interfaced
with the microcontroller to make different kind of
applications. This Embedded Etheret module paves the way
to numerous applications to be developed in the area of home
monitoring and automation.
VII. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
We have shown that it is possible to develop a Surveillance
monitoring system based on Embedded Etheret. These
embedded Etheret modules are having the capacity to
perform as a true etheret device. It is possible to interface
diferent kind of sensors with these modules and make vaious
applications. We can construct a distributed data collection
system by connecting several embedded Etheret modules on
the network.
VIII. ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors are gratefl to Mr.V.B.Taneja, Director (A&R),
Mr.Sourish Bahera, Project Manager and Mr. Rakesh.M,
Scientist-C, CDAC-Noida for their encouragement and
guidance to present/publish this paper.
REFERENCES
jI| W.R.Stevens, TCP/IP Illustrated Volume I, Addison-Wesley, Boston,
May 1994.
j/| A. Dunkels. uIP - a TCPIIP stack for 8- ad 16-bit
Micro controllers. Web page. 2010-10-14.
UR: http://duokels.com/adauip/
'-
Atmel Corporation. Embedded web server. A VR
460, January 20 I 0, Available from www.atmel.coll.
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