A Microcontroller-based High-speed Serial Link For Process Tomography Systems

H K S Lim* and W Q Yang**

Department of Electrical Engineering and Electronics, Process Tomography Group, UMIST, PO Box 88, Manchester M60 1QD, UK, email w.yang@umist.ac.uk

Abstract - A process tomography system usually employs a PC for operation control and image reconstruction. The on-line image reconstruction speed is mainly limited by data acquisition and image reconstruction processes. An intelligent interface has been developed with a microcontroller, Transputer link adaptor chips (C011) and optical fibres to perform data acquisition, so that the PC CPU can be dedicated to image reconstruction. The interface card is embedded in the PC as the host terminal of the link. A C011 in the other terminal is configured to have two 8 bit parallel ports (one input and one output) for interfacing with sensing circuits. The microcontroller receives commands from the PC and controls data acquisition processes. Data sent by the distant terminal is collected by the microcontroller and stored in memory on the card. Once a set of data for one image has been collected, it is uploaded to the PC. It has been successfully applied in an electrical capacitance tomography system.

Keywords: Data transmission, Microcontroller system, PC interface, Capacitance tomography