RU61447U1 - WIRELESS INFORMATION COLLECTION SYSTEM FROM INTEGRATED SENSORS - Google Patents

Abstract

The proposed solution relates to systems for collecting information and transmitting it over wireless networks. The proposed system is intended for use, for example, for control in the oil and gas industries. The wireless system for collecting information from integrated sensors contains a base station (1. Fig. 1), with a control computer connected to it via an interface (2 Fig. 1) and system nodes (3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Fig. 1), while the system node contains a transceiver (1 Fig. 2), a controller (2, Fig. 2), a circuit for connecting the controller to the sensors with the ability to connect sensors, as well as a power source or voltage converter (20 Fig. 2), wherein the controller processor and software are configured to pre-process the signals from sensors and communicating with other network nodes via a radio channel. Data transmission from remote nodes (5, 6, 7, 8) Fig. 1 to the base station is carried out in several jumps through intermediate network nodes, which allows for communication between the system nodes that are out of direct radio visibility with respect to the base station.

Description

The proposed solution relates to industrial automation, namely to systems for collecting information and transmitting it over wireless networks. The proposed system can be used mainly for collecting, processing information from sensors located in oil and gas producing wells of fields to provide statistical data on the operation of each well, warning signals in case of emergency, to prevent equipment failure. The system can also be used in automation of resource consumption control of operating organizations, in security and fire control systems, as well as in consumer electronics and equipment, providing the ability to control various household appliances using a single universal device.

A known system comprising a local terminal, a central terminal including at least a computer and a data modem connected to a computer through a local terminal interface unit, a power supply network to which several subscriber sets are connected, is a group of sensors, each data modem subscriber kit for receiving and transmitting manipulated signals in a band not exceeding 4F, respectively, at carrier frequencies nF and mF, where F is the frequency of the power supply network, n and m are the numbers of its harmonics, selected within from 10 to 20,000, while the data modem of the local terminal is configured to transmit and receive similar signals, respectively, at carrier frequencies mF and nF, the controller of each subscriber set is configured to read information from at least one group of sensors and store it in the course of a given time interval, the issuance of accumulated information either cyclically or selectively, depending on the type of request, and / or when there is a need for urgent data transfer, and the local terminal made with the possibility of receiving and accumulating data from the controllers of all subscriber sets and issuing the accumulated data. (RF patent for the invention No. 2178951)

The closest technical solution to the claimed utility model is a system for automatically collecting and transmitting readings of water, gas and electricity consumption meters (RF application No. 2003102370/09, published 2004.06.20) containing

at least one transmitting device for transmitting counter readings and at least one receiving component for receiving these readings, said at least one transmitting device comprising a hardware interface subsystem that adapts the signal received from the flow meter for processing by a microcontroller subsystem that executes a software application and prepares the readings of the flow meter for sending by the transmission subsystem in the radio range to at least one receiving component, from characterized in that the said at least one transmitting device and one receiving component define a wireless network of an independent configuration, self-organizing in the area in which the meter readings are transmitted to the next component using multi-hop signal propagation technologies according to the following routing algorithm: the receiving components are assigned the value "t ", maximum equal to" T ", if the maximum value of the receiving components located in close proximity to a certain node of the data network is equal to the assigned value "t", this node is assigned the value "tk", each node transmits a message to the neighboring node with a value of "t" that exceeds its own value, and if there is more than one node with the same maximum value, the message is transmitted to one of these nodes.

The inventive utility model is aimed at solving the following technical problem:

Information collection from a large number (up to several thousand) of geographically distributed sensors (devices) that do not have any wired connections, in the absence of direct radio visibility between the data collection center and individual sensors (devices) with the possibility of dynamically connecting new devices to the network, which does not require manual network configuration and non-licensing.

Technical results obtained by implementing the utility model.

The system collects information from remote sensors with the transmission of this information to the center (base station) over the air.

The system supports up to 65,000 devices to which sensors are connected.

The radio interface and the medium access protocol provide data transmission from the device to the base station through intermediate network devices, outside the direct radio visibility between the base station and the device.

The medium access protocol provides automatic reconfiguration of the network when you turn on a new device and turn off any device.

A radio transmitter with a capacity of not more than 10 mW, operating in the range of 433 MHz, is used. A radio device with these parameters does not require licensing.

The structural diagram of the claimed utility model is presented in Fig. 1, where:

1 - base station;

2 - control computer;

3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 - system nodes;

9 - radius of direct radio communication;

10 - data transfer topology.

The structural diagram of the system node is shown in Fig. 2, where

1 - transceiver microcircuit;

2 - controller;

3 - FM modulator (DDS);

4 - FM demodulator;

5 - filter;

6 - control interface;

7 - PLL

8 - VCO

9 - Amplifier

10 - Power Amplifier

11 - LNA (low noise amplifier)

12 - processor

13 - Programmable I / O

14 - USART (universal synchronous-asynchronous amplifier)

15 - USART (universal synchronous-asynchronous amplifier)

16 - Flash memory 60 kB

17 - SRAM 2 kB

18 - Programmable I / O

19 - Analog-to-digital Converter 8 channels

20 - voltage converter, or power source

The claimed technical result is achieved due to the fact that the system contains a base station (1. Fig. 1), with a control computer connected to it via an interface (2 Fig. 1) and system nodes (3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 Fig. 1), while the system node contains a transceiver 1 Fig. 2), a controller (2, Fig. 2), interface circuits with sensor controllers with the ability to connect sensors (not shown), as well as a power source or voltage converter (20 Fig. 2)), while the processor and controller software are configured to preliminarily rabotki signals from the sensors and to communicate with other nodes of the network through a radio channel. Data transmission from remote nodes (5, 6, 7, 8) Fig. 1 to the base station is carried out in several jumps through intermediate network nodes, which allows communication between system nodes that are out of direct visibility with respect to the base station.

The system consists of a base station (possibly redundant), and network nodes to which the sensor controllers or the sensors themselves are connected. A control computer is connected to the base station via an interface, which can act as a controller of a wireless network for collecting information or serve as a gateway to an IP network that combines several wireless networks. The base station includes a transceiver. The base station transmits commands and requests of the control computer via a radio channel to the system nodes, as well as receives data from the system nodes and transfers them to the control computer.

The protocols developed for this system provide routing and redirection of messages, as well as automatic (re) network configuration when entering and disconnecting network nodes and switching from the main base station to the reserve one.

The system node consists of two main subsystems:

- Transceiver 1 (Fig. 2),

- controller 2 (Fig. 2),

as well as a power source or voltage converter and other auxiliary circuits.

The controller performs the functions of controlling the radio channel, implements media access protocols (MAC) and the network layer; for example, microcontrollers of the Atmel AVR family can be used as the controller.

The controller contains a universal synchronous-asynchronous port for communication with the main controller, which performs the functions of collecting and processing information from sensors.

It is also possible to use the node controller directly to collect information from sensors. In this case, the ADCs and programmable I / O lines located on the chip are used and the corresponding application programs for working in the device execution environment are developed.

The nodes of the system use an operating system that provides high speed information processing with a small occupied memory.

The architecture of the system under consideration is based on three types of objects - events, active messages and components. Unlike most traditional systems, there is no concept of a process as a basic element of a system. The system is divided into components that include executable code and a frame with variables. All components and the connections between them are installed statically during system compilation. Component code execution is triggered by an event. An event can be a hardware interrupt or an active message. A message is called active because its header contains the index of its handler, the component of the system responsible for interpreting the message. Messages can come both through hardware ports (from a radio or serial port), and programmatically from other system components.

The model of program execution with the help of events provides a natural implementation of the tasks of a wireless network node, since all its actions are somehow related to external events (packet arrival) or the operation of timers.

Active messages support a single data transfer model both between software components within a node and between nodes. The active message model provides fast message processing (since no interpretation of the bit structure is required to determine the handler and demultiplexing) and simple extensibility of the protocol family.

For the system under consideration, channel and network protocols have been adopted. Unlike traditional protocols, there is no strict separation between the channel and network level. In particular, there is no separate link layer header, and the MAC address and network address are the same.

At the same time, the implementation of these protocols is fully software-based, which will make it possible to modify them in the future and, if necessary, even ensure compatibility with IP at any required level.

The channel protocol is a Carrier Detection and Collision Avoidance Protocol (CSMA / CA), similar in principle to the IEEE 802.11 wireless network protocol. A separate MAC-level header is not provided, since the MAC address of the node and its network address coincide, and the packet is processed by the software in an integrated manner, without separation into the channel and network levels.

The length of the MAC address is 16 bits, which provides the ability to work 65 thousand nodes on the same network.

The network protocol is tightly integrated with the operating system and the runtime. It provides the following basic primitives:

- message transmission without delivery guarantee (best-effort),

- addressing

- direction of the received message to the corresponding software handler.

A packet has only two fixed fields: the address of the recipient node and the identifier of the software handler to which the packet should be delivered in the recipient node (see Fig. 3a). All other fields (for example, packet length), generally speaking, depend on a specific handler. Two addresses are allocated: 0 × FFFF is the broadcast address, 0 × FF7E is the address of the base station.

Additional runtime components provide:

- routing (on a given route with an indication of intermediate nodes or in the direction of the base station);

- checking the integrity of the message using a cyclic redundancy code or checking and correcting a 1-bit error;

- the function of the gateway between the radio network and the serial port of the node.

To build a routing table, the system uses a variant of the Destination-Sequenced Distance Vector algorithm, optimized for transmitting data from peripheral nodes to the base station.

The system operates as follows. Each node of the system knows only its own address. The base station periodically sends broadcast messages in which it identifies itself. Nodes that are within sight of the base station (3, 4) use these messages to update their routing tables. Then they send messages to all nodes that can hear them (No. 5, 6, 7, 8) that there is a path to the base station through them. The system node remembers the first of the received messages updating the routing table, which corresponds to the shortest path to the base station.

To collect information, each node periodically collects and transmits data, and also takes part in data routing towards the base station. The data is transmitted by the node at the address of the node from which the last message about the change of the routing table was received. The receiver repeats this process, and eventually the packet reaches the base station. In the system, each node knows the address of the node, which is one hop closer to the base station.

The considered algorithm provides a quick update of data on the network topology in the case of installing new devices or turning off any nodes. In addition, the ability to reserve the base station is automatically achieved, since in case of failure of the main base station, it is enough to turn on the backup and a new communication topology will be built in less than a second.

Claims (2)

1. A wireless system for collecting information from integrated sensors, containing more than one system node with the ability to connect sensors, including a transceiver and a controller, while the controller processor and software are capable of pre-processing data received from sensors and communication of the system node via a radio channel with others system nodes, characterized in that the system node contains a power source or voltage converter, the system further comprises a base station with a control computer connected to it through the interface, while the software of the computer and the processor of the controller of the system nodes is configured to transmit data from the system nodes outside the direct radio visibility zone to the base station in a few jumps through the intermediate nodes of the system. 2. The system according to claim 1, characterized in that the control computer has access to the IP network.