Development Of A Test System Communication Gateway

With the rapid development of network, more and more instruments are integrated into the Internet. We can control the remote instruments conveniently and the test data can be collected, transmited and displayed through the network. Network test has become an inevitable trend.The standard of GPIB interface is widely used in instruments and meters, especially in foreign countries, most of the instruments are equipped with a GPIB interface. In contrast, the domestic instruments are equipped with a RS232 interface. Taking the cost and other factors into account, we use the GPIB-Ethernet converter or RS232-Ethernet converter to connect these instruments into Internet and form a networked automatic test system. In this topic we will develop a communication gateway, both the GPIB-Ethernet and RS232-Ethernet converter are integrated in it, the communication gateway can improve the level of automation. In this paper, we analysed the hardware circuit design and software programming.The hardware circuit mainly includes the following modules: microprocessor peripheral circuit, RS232 interface circuit, Ethernet interface circuit, GPIB interface circuit. The software programming mainly includes RS232 interface communication, Ethernet interface communication, GPIB interface communication and protocol conversion program.We use the GPIB device communication assistant and serial port-Ethernet debugging assistant to test the three interfaces, the test results verify that the three interfaces are able to communicate correctly and achieve the conversion function.