Design Of Embedded Information Terminal Hardware, Low Power And SI Research

Nowadays information is rapidly expanding and exploding, there is a great demand for acquiring and updating information in a cheap and convenient way. In recent years, with the development of computer science and communications technology, performance of public Information Terminals (InfoTerm) has greatly improved.Current InfoTerms are almost based on industrial control PC. It has relatively lower development cost as well as higher cost and power consumption. There are many advantages to design InfoTerms based upon embedded processor comparatively to industrial control PC.When we design an InforTerm, almost all aspects of a small computer system are involved. The most important thing is the choice of an appropriate processor for the embedded system. In this paper, we put emphasis on analyzing rules of choosing processor and compare several kinds of processors possibly used. As a conclusion, we consider ARCA II processor as an optimal choice.To implement the reuse of our design, the smallest system based on ARCA II processor to satisfy the need of the InfoTerm is defined. Hardware design considerations related to video, network, image capture, audio and touch screen are illustrated.Through analyzing power comsumption model in digital circuits and decreaing power comsumption methods including dynamic voltage management and partial bus encoding, we propose an approach called Bus Grouped Buffer with Output Enable (BGBOE) to decrease power comsumption of the bus. The feasibility and possibility to decrease power comsumption of DRAM by changing refresh mode of DRAM and to fully use the character of low power consumption of the processor itself are also analyzed.We must consider Signal Integrity (SI) in InfoTerm design. Transmission line model applys to route high-speed signals. On basis of tansmission line theory, we get constraint conditions to route high-speed signals. The SI simulation results of our routing high-speed signals are shown.At the end of the thesis, implementations of hardware and software of the InfoTerm are discussed. An example is given to make use of information terminal in a practical law query system.