Nevertheless, at present, examples of intelligent sensors available on the market and compliant with this standard are still limited [21]. To solve this problem, some dedicated hardware interfaces based on the IEEE 1451 standard, able to interface with different Site URL List 1|]# sensor typologies were recently proposed. These proposed devices are usually based on relatively complex dedicated electronic boards [22�C30].With this in mind, the authors propose a new low-cost system to convert a generic transducer into a intelligent sensor with multiple standardized wired interfaces. This innovative system is called Universal Intelligent Sensor Interface (UISI).
It provides a flexible analog and/or digital front-end (including conditioning and conversion functions), able to interface different transducer typologies, while providing enhanced processing and storage capabilities and a configurable multi-standard output interface (including plug-and-play interface inspired to IEEE 1451.3 standard). A similar approach based on reconfigurable FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) and FPAA (Analog Array), compliant with IEEE 1451.4 standard, have been also very recently proposed [31].The presented work is structured as follows: in the first part the general concept of the UISI is presented. Then, the design and implementation section describes the hardware board realization, the dynamic analog/digital front-end configuration, and the firmware/software development.
Experimental characterization results tests, in the lab and in real applications, are then presented and discussed.2.
?Universal Intelligent Sensor Interface Concept and the IEEE Batimastat 1451 StandardThe Universal Intelligent Sensor Interface (UISI) intends to provide a quick and reliable solution to convert a common generic transducer into a intelligent sensor with plug and play features (Figure 1).Figure 1.Schematic diagram of the Universal Intelligent Sensor Interface (UISI) concept: the UISI converts a generic transducer into an intelligent sensor.The UISI achieves this goal by providing a firmware configurable analog front-end circuit, some computational capabilities, a memory for data and for configuration parameters, and one or more standardized output connections.
Cilengitide Figure 2 shows the architecture of the proposed device.Figure 2.Architecture of UISI.The core of the UISI interface is a reconfigurable conditioning module, composed by several operational amplifiers (with selectable gains) and digital modules that can be connected each other via firmware in different ways, providing the required complete front-end for different types of sensors, including single/differential amplification, analog to digital conversion, powering and filtering.