An embedded architecture for distributed processing: A practical solution for combining peripherals and digital processing

This paper covers the hardware and basic software design of a multifunctional module that offers the peripheric devices specific to a microcontroller, while having a digital signal processor core, in order to be used in robots or decentralized industrial applications. Considering the module has a field bus interface, a distributed system can be constructed by interconnecting a number of such devices. Unlike PLCs, one module offers all the functionality needed, thus making each system node able to assume other node's tasks in case of failure. A test application consisting of two PID controllers and a supervisor was implemented using three modules.