Middleware Technology Fieldbus Interconnection Gateway

Field Bus is widely applied in modern industrial control. However,many different field buses supporting different standards have been installed in industrial field in different time periods under different circumstances. In application, different field buses often need to communicate with each other. Besides, users always need to control many different field-bus devices.Thus it's necessary to address the interoperating issue and provide the uniform customer interface.The research has been focusing on the interaction of various field-buses and integration of control systems.To address the interoperating issue and facilitate the development of distributed control applications, we design and implement the Interconnect Unit (IU).A distributed field-bus system requires real-time communication over network;An embedded control system also requires precise real-time control, so it's a distributed embedded real-time control system.1. The technology of Distributed Control System, Field Bus and heterogeneous field buses interoperating are introduced in this thesis; and we propose the approach which provides an integrated software framework to interconnect heterogeneous fieldbuses.2. Real-time embedded system and VxWorks OS used in this system are introduced separately and the mechanism of real-time guarantee of VxWorks is analyzed.3. Distributed Object Technology and Object-Oriented Middleware are analyzed, and a real-time middleware ACE/TAO used in system is introduced in detail; and the mechanism of implementation and real-time guarantee of TAO is explicated.4. The development process of the IU is discussed,including software and hardware architecture design, system framework design, implementation and the use of ACE/TAO real-time infrastructure. Besides, an expectation of future development roadmap of the system is giving in the end of this thesis.The Field Buses Interconnect Unit based on ACE/TAO middleware has good architecture and is easy to extend. It is also easy and fast to interconnect heterogeneous field buses and can be used for high-level industrial applications to control and monitor the field buses systems. Besides, it has the capability of real-time scheduling.