Miguel Angel Domínguez

Electronics in Automotive Engineering: A Top–Down Approach for Implementing Industrial Fieldbus Technologies in City Buses and Coaches

The electrical circuits and their electronic control units in city buses and coaches are essential for good performance. Drive, braking, suspension, door opening, security, and communication devices must be integrated in a reliable and real-time information system. The industrial communication networks or fieldbuses are a good solution to implement networked control systems for the onboard electronics in the public transport buses and coaches. Also, this trend of automotive electronics is being encouraged in the current European Union Framework Program (FP) (seventh FP), which is devoted to intelligent transportation systems, for facing the worlds new challenges in environmental care and efficient fuel consumption among others. The authors are working in the design of multiplexed solutions based on fieldbuses to integrate the body and chassis functions of city public transport buses. An example for the EURO5 model of the Scania manufacturer is reported in this paper.

An event driven software architecture for enterprise-wide data source integration

This is a work in progress paper where the authors are involved in a telco corporation reengineering project of a half terabyte data warehouse (DW). Firstly the DW context is introduced, focusing in three related and critical issues: the data source integration, component reuse and performance bottlenecks. Then we discuss the actual implicit architecture found in the runtime system, identifying the problems. Finally the proposed architecture is presented. It has two views: a static made with filters and pipes, and a dynamic based on an event driven scheduler, as opposed to a fixed time one. In the runtime scenario, the scheduler reads the pipe configurations from the metadata repository, and then executes on the fly the planned filters, transforming data into business information.

An Experimental Ad-Hoc WSN for the Instrumentation of Biological Models

Biological research in agriculture requires a wide range of electronic sensors to fulfill different goals, such as climate monitoring, soil and fruit assessment, control of insects and diseases, chemical pollutants, identification and control of weeds, crop tracking, and so on. This research must be supported by consistent biological models able to simulate diverse environmental conditions to advice on the needed human actions before risky biological damage could become irreversible. In this paper, an experimental agrometeorological sensor-based wireless distributed network is described. Its purpose is to provide real measurements to validate the different biological models used for viticulture applications.

A reusable distributed software architecture driven by metadata

This is a work in progress paper where authors are involved in a Telco corporation reengineering project of a half terabyte data warehouse (DW). Firstly the DW context is introduced. Then we discuss the actual implicit architecture found in the runtime system, identifying the problems. Finally the proposed architecture is presented. It has two views: a static, made with filters and pipes, and a dynamic based on an event driven scheduler, as opposed to a fixed time one. In the runtime scenario, the scheduler reads the pipe configurations from the metadata repository, and then executes on the fly the planed filters, transforming data into business information.

Reconfigurable Industrial Sensors for Remote Condition Monitoring and Modeling

The objective of this paper is the development of a software architecture to ease access and management of data for applications with variable and configurable data sources. The purpose of this architecture is to build a configurable and flexible system where acquisition tasks are decoupled from data-access tasks. To accomplish this, the authors have implemented what they have called virtual acquisition cards , which provide a reconfigurable and dynamic view during runtime of the data required by the user applications. These data can be used by different kind of applications from diverse knowledge areas (meteorological, industrial, medical, and so on) for the analysis of behavioral models or condition monitoring. This paper introduces the architecture of the system proposed with its involved parts. Then, it details the most important parts of the system and how they work. Next, several real working applications, using the proposed architecture, are shown. A discussion about other existing commercial systems is made, and finally, future works and conclusions are presented.

Implementing a Fieldbus Interface Using an FPGA

Fieldbuses are serial communication buses frequently used in industrial applications. There are a lot of different commercial solutions making difficult the compatibility between the equipment of different manufacturers. In this way to change an equipment implies to change the fieldbus too with the consequent economic losses. To avoid this problems this paper proposes the implementation of the fieldbus protocol in a reconfigurable device. Using reconfigurable devices it is possible to modify the protocol of a communication bus without changing its hardware support. Due to the diversity of commercial fieldbuses this work is centered on the implementation of a FPGA based interface for WorldFIP, one of the most popular fieldbuses.

Using LOTOS in the specification of industrial bus communication protocols

The aim of this paper is to expose the utility of formal description techniques (FDTs) applied to the design of industrial communication protocols (fieldbuses). For this purpose the authors explain their experience in the formal specification of the data link layer of the WorldFIP French standard. Nowadays there is in the market a great number of protocols in the framework of industrial communications. They are devised for specific applications and distributed control processes. Every manufacturer has tied its customers to its own proprietary fieldbuses, which has led this technology to a great lack of standardization. Thus, the interconnection of equipment from different manufacturers has become very problematic. In this paper an introduction to fieldbuses is given, with an explanation of their main features, standardization attempts and applications. WorldFIP is a fieldbus network protocol designed to provide links between sensors/actuators and process units (PLCs, controllers, etc.) in automation systems. This protocol has been proposed by French manufacturers and has become a standard. This paper analyses the data link layer of WorldFIP, specifying it with the formal language LOTOS. This is a formal description technique (FDT) standardized by ISO (International Organization, for Standardization) for designing services and protocols used in the communication of open systems (OSI: Open systems Interconnection). Also, the methodology followed for validating the formal description is explained. Finally an executable that constitutes a simulation system for WorldFIP networks is implemented following this specification.

Link level formal specification for industrial communication networks

In this paper the formal specification, verification, validation, implementation and simulation of Fieldbus Data Link (FDL) and management (FMA1/2) levels of the field bus protocol PROFIBUS through LOTOS formal description language is described. In this paper the LOTOS language is briefly described and a description is given of the field bus PROFIBUS in what concerns to its data link and management levels. A description of the obtained specification, is split into two parts: firstly, the different data types used, and secondly, the behavior part is described. Validation and implementation of the specification are explained. The conclusions obtained and the possible future works are mentioned.

Deployment and Implementation of an Agricultural Sensor Network

Biological research in agriculture needs a lot of specialised electronic sensors in order to fulfill different goals, like as: climate monitoring, soil and fruit assessment, control of insects and diseases, chemical pollutants, identification and control of weeds, crop tracking, and so on. That research must be supported by consistent biological models able to simulate diverse environmental conditions, in order to predict the right human actions before risky biological damage could be irreversible. In this paper an experimental distributed network based on climatic and biological wireless sensors is described , for providing real measurements in order to validate different biological models used for viticulture applications. First, the experimental network for field automatic data acquisition is introduced , as a system based in a distributed process. Following, the design of the wireless network is explained in detail, with a previous discussion about the state-of-the-art, and some measurements for viticulture research are pointed out. Finally future developments are stated.

University-enterprise technology transfer for education and training about industrial processes

The authors present a multidisciplinary project called PROPYME, which is a team effort of the University of Vigo (Spain) and the FEUGA autonomous government foundation (Galicia, North West of Spain), both supported by several industrial enterprises from the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) market. The main purpose of PROPYME project was to accomplish an innovative technology-transfer task from university industrial researchers, to Small and Medium Enterprises (SME), for enhancing their productivity by the automation of their industrial and management processes. This involves a SMEpsilas effort not only by a financial point of view, but adaptation, knowledge acquisition and organizational changes. Moreover, embedding ICTpsilas involves adapting Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) tools to integrate vertically process and systems, owned by the SME itself, facing to decision challenges based on economic value, knowledge and communication concepts. The PROPYME first phase is a portal Web with a demonstration multimedia tool, text, graphics, animations, audio and video, that shows fifteen industrial processes based on diverse technologies frequently used for industrial enterprises.