FROM CAMAC TO WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS AND TIME-TRIGGERED SYSTEMS AND BEYOND: EVOLUTION OF COMPUTER INTERFACES FOR DATA ACQUISITION AND CONTROL. PART I

Authors

  • Janusz Zalewski

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.47839/ijc.15.2.842

Keywords:

Data Acquisition, Computer Control, CAMAC, Computer Buses, VMEbus, Firewire, USB.

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to present a historical overview of design choices for data acquisition and control systems, from the first developments in CAMAC, through the evolution of their designs operating in VMEbus, Firewire and USB, to the latest developments concerning distributed systems using, in particular, wireless protocols and time-triggered architecture. First part of the overview is focused on connectivity aspects, including buses and interconnects, as well as their standardization. More sophisticated designs and a number of challenges are addressed in the second part, among them: bus performance, bus safety and security, and others.

References

E. J. Millett, “Digital techniques in laboratory automation,” Journal of Physics E: Scientific Instruments, vol. 9, issue 10, pp. 794-802, October 1976.

R. W. Dobinson, “Practical data acquisition problems in large high-energy physics experiments,” in Proceedings of the 6th CERN School of Computing, Vraona-Attiki, Greece, September 14-27, 1980. Report CERN-1991-003, pp. 325-361.

K. D. Müller, “ESONE activities,” in Proceedings of the International Conference on New Trends in Data and Signal Processing in Research ESONE RTD’95, Warsaw, Poland, September 27-29, 1995, pp. 9-14.

Commission of the European Communities. CAMAC – A Modular Instrumentation System for Data Handling, Report EUR 4100-EN, Brussels, 1969.

IEC-516-1975 A Modular Instrumentation System for Data Handling: CAMAC System, International Electrotechnical Commission, Geneva, Switzerland, 1975.

IEEE Std 583-1975, Modular Instrumentation and Digital Interface System (CAMAC), Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Washington, DC, 1975.

Commission of the European Communities. CAMAC – Updates Specifications, vol. 1. Report EUR 8500-EN, Brussels, 1983.

P. Clout, A CAMAC Primer, Report LA-UR 82-2718, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, December 1982.

J. Zalewski, “Interconnect architectures: Old and new,” in Proceedings of the International Conference on New Trends in Data and Signal Processing in Research ESONE RTD’95, Warsaw, Poland, September 27-29, 1995, pp. 15-21.

J. Zalewski, “Real-time software architectures and design patterns: Fundamental concepts and their consequences,” Annual Reviews in Control, vol. 25, issue 1, pp. 133-146, July 2001.

J. Zalewski, “Real-time data acquisition in high-energy physics experiments,” in Proceedings of the IEEE Workshop on Real-Time Applications, New York, May 13-14, 1993, pp. 112-115.

A. Kovarik, “On the automatic registration of α-particles, β-particles and γ-ray and X-ray pulses,” Physical Review, vol. 13, issue 4, pp. 272-280, 1919.

W. LeCroy, “The history of data acquisition for high-energy physics – a corporate perspective,” in Proceedings of the 9th Fermilab industrial affiliates roundtable on applications of accelerators, Batavia, Ill.,May 26-27, 1989, pp. 147-168.

E. Meschi, “The DAQ needle in the big-data haystack,” Journal of Physics: Conference Series, vol. 664, issue 3, pp. 2353-2360, 2015.

H. Bisby, “The CAMAC interface and some applications,” The Radio and Electronic Engineer, vol. 41, issue 12, pp. 527-537, December 1971.

R. C. M. Barnes, I. N. Hooton, “The CAMAC system of modular instrumentation,” IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science, vol. 16, issue 5, pp. 76-80, 1969.

K. Tradowsky, CAMAC – Ein System rechnergefürter Elektronik – Prinzip und Anwendungen, Report KFK 1241, Kern-forschungszentrum Karlsruhe, Juli 1970.

L. Costrell, “CAMAC instrumentation system – introduction and general description,” IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science, vol. 18, issue 2, pp. 3-8, 1971.

R. L’Archeveque, G. Yan, A Review of the CAMAC Concept, Report AECL-3806, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, Chalk River, Ont., March 1971.

R. C. Furst, J. D. Wiedwald, CAMAC System for Remote Data Acquisition, Report UCRL-73968, Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, Livermore, Calif., June 1972.

F. A. Kirsten, “Some characteristics of interfaces between CAMAC and small computers,” IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science, vol. 18, issue 2, pp. 39-45, 1971.

F. Iselin et al., Pattern A – Type 021, CERN NP CAMAC Note 8-00, CERN, Geneva, Switherland, January 1969.

H. Halling, K. Zwoll. K. D. Müller, “Versatile PDP-11 CAMAC crate controller for nuclear data acquisition and processing,” IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science, vol. 19, issue 1, pp. 699-703, February 1972.

L. Babiloni, E. de Agostino, A. Ostrowicz, CAMAC Module Interface between CAMAC System and IBM 360/44 Computer, Report CNEN RT/EL(72)5, Comitato Nazionale Energia Nucleare, Rome, Italy, 1972.

I. Tradowsky-Thal, CAMAC Bibliographie, Report KFK 1471, Kernforschungszentrum Karlsruhe, September 1971.

I. Tradowsky-Thal, CAMAC Bibliographie Supplement, Report KFK 1671, Kern-forschungszentrum Karlsruhe, Oktober 1972.

R. C. M. Barnes, A. R. C. Whiteman, CAMAC Bibliography Covering Period 1968-71, Report AERE-BIB-180, Atomic Energy Research Establishment, Harwell, UK, March 1972.

H. J. Stuckenberg, “CAMAC bibliography,” CAMAC Bulletin, No. 13 (Supplement B), pp. 1-36, September 1975.

J. Zalewski, CAMAC Bibliography, Report ESONE/BIB/01, Commission of the European Communities, Luxembourg, 1978.

P. J. Ponting, “Lessons learnt from fastbus,” in Proceedings of the ESONE VMEbus Working Group Workshop on New Backplane Bus Architectures, CERN, Geneva, Switzerland, March 22-23, 1990. Report CERN CN 90/4, pp. 5-20.

Anon., “Buses at the crossroads,” CERN Courier, pp. 5-6, June 1990.

IEEE Std 488-1975 – Standard Digital Interface for Programmable Instrumentation, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Washington, DC, 1975.

R. S. Larsen, “Introduction to the fastbus standard data bus,” Interfaces in Computing, vol. 1, issue 1, pp. 19-31, May 1982.

IEEE Std 960-1986 – FASTBUS Modular High-Speed Data Acquisition and Control System, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Washington, DC, 1986.

P. J. Ponting, Fastbus: The Development of a Standard and its Infrastructure, Report CERN/ECP 91-2, CERN, Geneva, Switzerland, January 1991.

J. Zalewski (Ed.), Advanced Multimicro-processor Bus Architectures, IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, Calif., 1994.

IEEE Std 675-1979 – Multiple Controllers in a CAMAC Crate, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Washington, DC, 1979.

R. DeBock, “VERSAbus – A multiprocessor bus standard – and VMEbus – its Eurocard counterpart,” Microprocessors and Micro-systems, vol. 6, issue 9, pp. 475-481, November 1982.

W. Fischer, “IEEE P1014 – A standard for the high-performance VME bus,” IEEE Micro, vol. 5, issue 1, pp. 31-40, February 1985.

IEEE Std 1014-1987 – A Versatile Backplane Bus: VMEbus, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Washington, DC, 1987.

IEEE Std 1296-1987 – High-Performance Synchronous 32-Bit Bus: Multibus II, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Washington, DC, 1987.

W. M. Clemow, “Introduction to the Multibus II architecture,” Interfaces in Computing, vol. 3, issues 3-4, pp. 277-286, 1985.

M. D. Rap, R. S. Tetrick, “P1296: The interprocess communication standard,” IEEE Micro, vol. 6, issue 3, pp. 72-77, June 1986.

J. Mahoney, “Overview of Multibus II architecture,” Supermicro Journal, issue 4, pp. 58-67, January/February 1990.

C. Beardsmore, “Multibus II: A bus architecture for fault resilient systems,” in Proceedings of the IEE Colloquium on Designing Resilient Architectures, London, November 15, 1991, IEE Digest, No. 170, pp. 3/1-3/11.

M. Lobelle, “VME bus interfacing: A case study,” Interfaces in Computing, vol. 1, issue 3, pp. 193-210, August 1983.

C. Parkman, VMEbus at CERN – A Brief Review, Report CERN DD/85/28, CERN, Geneva, Switzerland, November 1985.

W. F. Jones et al., “A VMEbus based, real time sorter design for positron emission tomography,” IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science, vol. 33, issue 1, pp. 601-604, February 1986.

J. Regula, “The proposed SSBLT standard doubles the VME64 transfer rate,” IEEE Micro, vol. 12, issue 2, pp. 64-71, April 1992.

S. Pri-Tal, “The VME subsystem bus,” IEEE Micro, vol. 6, issue 2, pp. 66-71, April 1986.

J. Alexander, “Evolution and use of the VME subsystem bus – VSB,” Microprocessors & Microsystems, vol. 10, issue 6, pp. 307-312, July/August 1986.

C. F. Parkman, “VICbus: VME inter-crate bus – A versatile cable bus,” IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science, vol. 39, issue 2, pp. 77-84, 1992.

R. Dettmer, “The VXI bus: An open standard for modular instrumentation,” IEE Review, vol. 35, issue 9, pp. 327-330, October 1989.

IEEE Std 1155-1992 – VMEbus Extensions for Instrumentation: VXIbus, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Washington, DC, 1992.

C. Ender, “Has VXIbus a role in physics?” in Proceedings of the ESONE VMEbus Working Group Workshop on New Backplane Bus Architectures, CERN, Geneva, Switzerland, March 22-23, 1990. Report CERN CN 90/4, pp. 56-66.

S. Pri-Tal, “Giving the VME system a mid-life kicker,” in Proceedings of the ESONE VMEbus Working Group Workshop on New Backplane Bus Architectures, CERN, Geneva, Switzerland, March 22-23, 1990, Report CERN CN 90/4, pp. 44-55.

ANSI/VITA 1-1994 – American National Standard for VME64, VMEbus International Trade Association, Scottsdale, Ariz., 1994.

R. Alderman, “VME turns 30,” VME and Critical Systems, vol. 29, issue 3, pp. 7, Fall 2011.

J. B. Lister, A. Simik, “Control, acquisition and data retrieval for the TCA Tokamak,” in Proceedings of the 11th Symposium on Fusion Technology, Oxford, UK, Sept. 15-19, 1980, vol. 2, pp. 689-694.

IEEE Std 1394-1995 – High Performance Serial Bus, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Washington, DC, 1995.

IEC 62680-3-1 Ed. 1.0. Universal Serial Bus Interfaces for Data and Power – Part 3-1, International Electrotechnical Commission, Geneva, Switzerland, 2016.

M. Teener, A Bus on a Diet – The Serial Bus Alternative. An Introduction to the P1394 High Performance Serial Bus, Advanced Multimicro-processor Bus Architectures (J. Zalewski, Ed.), IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, Calif., 1994, pp. 180-194.

G. Marazas, “IEEE 1394: Status and growth path,” IEEE Micro, vol. 16, issue 3, pp. 75-78, June 1996.

T. J. Shea et al., “Evaluation of IEEE 1394 serial bus for distributed data acquisition,” in Proceedings of the 1997 Particle Accelerator Conference, Vancouver, BC, May 12-16, 1997, vol. 2, pp. 2501-2504.

A. Rillbert et al., “A general firewire data acquisition platform applied to SPECT,” in Proceedings of the 1999 IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium Conference Record, Seattle, Wash., October 24-30, 1999, pp. 489-493.

M. Scholles et al., “IEEE 1394 firewire system design for industrial and factory automation applications,” in Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation ETFA 2001, Antibes – Juan les Pins, France, October 15-18, 2001, pp. 627-630.

C. Williamsson, D. Williamsson, J. Zalewski, “A study of cluster computing over IEEE 1394,” in Proceedings of the 2nd Swedish-American Workshop on Modeling and Simulation SAWMAS-2004, Cocoa Beach, FL, February 2-3, 2004, pp. 120-126.

D. Steinberg, Y. Birk, “An empirical analysis of the IEEE-1394 serial bus protocol,” IEEE Micro, vol. 20, issue 1, pp. 58-65, January-February, 2000.

G. Ramamurthy, K. Ashenayi, “Comparative study of the firewire IEEE-1394 protocol with the universal serial bus and Ethernet,” in Proceedings of the 45th Midwest Symposium on Circuits and Systems MWSCAS-2002, Tulsa, Oklahoma, August 3-7, 2002, pp. II-509-512.

B. Murovec, S. Kocijancic, “A USB-based data acquisition system designed for educational purposes,” International Journal of Engineering Education, vol. 20, issue 1, pp. 24-30, 2004.

Z. Lucev, H. Dzapo, M. Cifrek, “Multifunctional configurable USB data acquisition system,” in Proceedings of the IEEE International Instrumentation Measurement Technology Conference IMTC 2008, Vancouver Island, Victoria, May 12-15, 2008, pp. 1206-1209.

J. P. Grinias et al., “An inexpensive, open-source USB Arduino data acquisition device for chemical instrumentation,” Journal of Chemical Education, vol. 93, pp. 1316-1319, 2016.

A. Podgorski, R. Nedwidek, M. Pochmara, “Implementation of the USB interface in the instrumentation for sound and vibration measurement,” in Proceedings of the IEEE International Workshop on Intelligent Data Acquisition and Advanced Computing Systems, IDAACS’2003, Lviv, Ukraine, September 8-10, 2003, pp. 159-163.

J. M. Najeb, A. Ruhullah, S. H. Salleh, “12-channel USB data acquisition system for QT dispersion analysis,” in Proceedings of the International Conference on Robotics, Vision, Information and Signal Processing ROVISP’2005, Penang, Malaysia, July 20-22, 2005.

Z. Guzik et al., “TUKAN – An 8k pulse height analyzer and multi-channel scanner with a PCI or a USB interface,” IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science, vol. 53, issue 1, pp. 231-235, February 2006.

Z. Vykydal, J. Jakubek, S. Posposil, “USB interface for Medipix2 pixel device enabling energy and position-sensitive detection of heavy charged particles,” Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research A, vol. 563, pp. 112-115, 2006.

J. H. Yoo et al., “Improved data acquisition system for CREAM-III,” in Proceedings of the 30th International Cosmic Rays Conference ICRC’07, Merida, Mexico, 2007, vol. 2, pp. 401-404.

D. A. Fabila et al., “Development of a spectrofluorometer with USB interface for in vivo measurements in surgical procedures,” in Proceedings of the 2nd Circuits and Systems for Medical and Environmental Applications Workshop CASME’2010, Merida, Mexico, December 13-15, 2010, pp. 1-4.

H. Jiang et al., “A USB-2 based portable data acquisition system for detector development and nuclear research,” Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research A, vol. 652, pp. 483-486, 2011.

M. Caciotta et al., “Development of an USB data acquisition system for power quality and smart metering applications,” in Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Environment and Elctrical Engineering EEEIC’2012, Venice, Italy, May 18-25, 2012, pp. 835-839.

S. Boukhenous et al., “A USB based data acquisition system for EMG signal recording,” in Proceedings of the 8th International Workshop on Systems, Signal Processing and their Applications WoSSPA’2013, Algiers, Algeria, May 12-15, 2013, pp. 230-232.

D. Li et al., “Design and implementation of data acquisition system based on FPGA and USB interface in Fourier-transform mass spectrometer,” in Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Biomedical Engineering and Informatics BMEI’2015, Shenyang, China, October 14-16, 2015, pp. 169-173.

J. R. Raj, S. M. K. Rahman, S. Anand, “Micro-controller USB interfacing with MATLAB GUI for low cost medical ultrasound scanners,” Engineering Science & Technology, vol. 19, pp. 964-969, 2016.

D. Hercog, B. Gergic, “A flexible microcontroller-based data acquisition device,” Sensors, vol. 14, pp. 9755-9775, 2014.

K. Mroczek, “USB FIFO interface for FPGA based DAQ applications,” in Proceedings of the 8th IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Data Acquisition and Advanced Computing Systems IDAACS’2015, Warsaw, Poland, September 24-26, 2015, pp. 666-671.

V. U. Patil, A. R. Kapur, “Real-time alert data acquisition system using dynamic IP embedded webserver by USB modem,” Procedia Comp. Science, vol. 49, pp. 187-193, 2015.

D. Calvet, “A review of technologies for the transport of digital data in recent physics experiments,” in Proceedings of the 14th IEEE-NPSS Real Time Conference RTC’05, Stockholm, June 4-10, 2005, pp. 629-633.

Downloads

Published

2016-06-30

How to Cite

Zalewski, J. (2016). FROM CAMAC TO WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS AND TIME-TRIGGERED SYSTEMS AND BEYOND: EVOLUTION OF COMPUTER INTERFACES FOR DATA ACQUISITION AND CONTROL. PART I. International Journal of Computing, 15(2), 92-106. https://doi.org/10.47839/ijc.15.2.842

Issue

Section

Articles