Open and Flexible Embedded System Applied to Positioning and Telecontrol

This paper presents the development and testing of an open and flexible embedded system applied to positioning and telecontrol (OFESAPO) for outdoor applications. The system is composed of a control center (CC) and a set of remote terminal units (RTUs); the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) 60870-5 series has been chosen for communication among them. This is a standard protocol of real-time telecontrol applications. The CC is a personal computer, and the RTUs are based on open hardware and software. The RTU hardware is an embedded system, i.e., a system-on-chip-type design using field-programmable gate array that has been programmed with the open-core LEON running Linux operating system. For prototyping, the GR-XC3S-1500 board has been used. As there is no open source code available for the IEC standard protocols, an open source code has also been implemented. Hence, both the hardware and the software are open source in OFESAPO. Several tests have been made to show the system's limitations and the suitability for real-time applications. A prototype has also been tested in a real environment, where the real position of two moving RTUs was shown by a CC using Google Map.