Research And Design Of Embedded Intelligent Concentrator Based On M-Bus

In recent years, remote automatic meter reading technology is more and more applied to central heating system, many areas using Automatic Meter Reading System(AMRS) eliminate the inconvenience and drawbacks which traditional manual meter reading have brought to management department. The concentrator is an important equipment of the Automatic Meter Reading System, it links the users’intelligent meters and the management center of heat supply company, and accomplish data collection, storage, transport and management work of users’heat meters. Concentrator is an embedded device that combines with electronic technology, computer technology and network communication technology, it can processes many complex tasks.The concentrator designed in this paper uses S3C2440ARM9microprocessor as the core of the hardware platform, and port the embedded Linux operating system into it. This paper also establishes a friendly interactive interface through the touch screen. The concentrator implements the data and energy transmission with multiple intelligent heat meters by M-Bus. Meanwhile, the concentrator accesses Ethernet via the LAN of the residential block, and communicates with the server in management center using TCP/IP transport protocol.This paper intensively studies the M-Bus communication technology that applied between the concentrator and intelligent heat meter, and describes the features and application specifications of M-Bus. According design principles and requirements of the concentrator, the paper s completes the functional design of the device and proposed the design scheme of the hardware and software platform, all the design attempts are respectively achieved by the modular methods. The concentrator designed in this paper has ample hardware communication interface, such as the M-Bus module, RS-232serial module, the Ethernet module and the LCD touch screen module. Also, a software development platform which is built on the ARM system architecture is accomplished for particular hardware platform. The paper achieved the porting of embedded Linux system, and on this basis, developed and modified the hardware device drivers. Finally, the application software program for the uplink communication is developed by using the socket communication technology which TCP/IP protocol supports to.Design of the concentrator involves many technical issues related to embedded system, and it also has certain technically difficulty. This paper provides the ideas of the feasibility of concentrator development, and the ideas can be applied to other meter reading system with good prospect.