Workshop on HW/SW Standard interfaces for Gas Sensors and Sensor Networks

Lecce (Italy), 18th and 19th November 2004

The workshop was focused on activities of the HW/SW standardisation working group.

The main reason for the convergence towards standard interfaces are current problems that system integrators face when installing different devices into heterogeneous hardware environments. Transducer manufacturers must now expend a great deal of engineering efforts to cover several control network technologies instead of designing the device once for all networks that adhere to the standardized interfaces. At the same time a standard interface between the microprocessor and transducer is essential for transducer manufacturers when they want to interface their products with a multitude of microprocessor buses.

These standard interfaces both at hardware and software levels are necessary to reach plug & play capabilities of the transducers against a microprocessor and any transducer node in a network (independent of the transport control chosen). This capability defines a common interaction language between transducer nodes, useful for intelligent interactions in contexts where a distributed and measurement control system is able to scale with complexity, especially when heterogeneous transducer nodes are employed.

The workshop has given the opportunity to the involved researchers to discuss results obtained in the study and implementation of IEEE 1451 family standard. As it is known, this family is composed on several parts, from the information model on microprocessor to the hardware definition on the single modules. All of them have been implemented and tested and are available for demonstration.

The IEEE 1451 family introduces a new concept of plug&play capabilities, by defining a common communication language of transducer nodes compliant with it. To this aim, it is possible to extend to a network of transducers where the presence of a central controller is not needed.
We have proved that boards compliant with this standard that implement different transducers can be plugged into a standard PC without any additional engineering efforts since reaches the plug&play capabilities above described.
Future efforts can be devoted to the implementation of wireless connection between the single board that implement several transducers and the network capable application processor. 

Covered Topics

• IEEE 1451 for transducers and especially for gas sensor devices (IEEE 1451.1, IEEE 1451.2 and IEEE 1451.4);
• Signal processing for communication with IEEE 1451
• Transducer networks

Organisation

Chair

Dr. Cosimo Distante, Istituto per la Microelettronica e Microsistemi (IMM).

Co-Chairs

Dr. Pietro Siciliano - CNR
Ing. Salvatore Rotolo – STMicroelectronics

Local Organizers

Ing. Leonardo My – CNR
Ing. Alessandro Leone – CNR
Ing. Francesco Buccolieri – CNR

Talks

• Welcome and introduction on the activities of the standardization working group, C. Distante
  
• Activities concerning Smart Sensors at the University of Barcelona, S. Marco, University of Barcelona  Download
• Wireless Ad Hoc sensor networks, S. Rotolo, STMicroelectronics  Download
• Development of a Smart Transducer Interface for gas sensor devices IEEE 1451.2, J. Bosch, University of Barcelona  Download
• IEEE 1451 protocol over a bus physical layer I2C based 1451.3 proposal, J.M. Gómez, University of Barcelona  Download
• IEEE1451.4: a way to standardize gas sensors, N. Ulivieri, U. of Siena  Download
• A modification of 1451.2 to serial interface, L. My, IMM - CNR  Download
• IEEE 1451.1-NCAP java communication framework. Future trends for WSN: IEEE 1451.5 and the ZigBee protocol, M. Rizzello, STMicroelectronics  Download
• An application of a signal compression algorithm embedded into IEEE 1451.1 standard, A. Leone, IMM - CNR