Web-based embedded control platform

Many electrical instruments are provided with Internet connection, which is mostly used for non-real time operation, e.g. file transferring. However, the real-time controlling and/or monitoring are getting more and more attention nowadays. In this paper, a Web-based embedded control platform (WECP) that is used for real-time operation is depicted. This embedded control platform mainly consists of digital signal processors (DSP) and field-programmable gate array (FPGA) chips. The DSP processors offer many standard industrial interfaces that can be used to connect with the other personal computers (PCs) and instruments. It is the main processor that handles digital signal processing, monitoring, and control of the whole system. The FPGA chips are mainly for fast data transmission and reception, which are directly connected to the analog front-ends (AFE) and instruments. Furthermore, this control platform offers an Internet link, through which the customers can control the DSP and the FPGA via a PC on the Internet. The programmability of both DSP processors and FPGA chips makes this control platform quite flexible, which greatly reduces the development cost. The experiment results show that the WECP is suitable for real-time operations.