Modularization and Generalization of the InPhase-System for Different Platforms

Motivation

The accuracy and efficiency of the InPhase-System may still need to be improved to reach a higher performance. To achieve the goal the InPhase-System could be applied to the devices which are becoming more powerful as the electronic technology is developing. At the same time a more efficient operating system should also be used, like RIOT.

RIOT has a more complete operating system structure. Through the Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) the hardware dependent driver will be isolated from the functional logic. The common functional logic is also encapsulated to provide the unified Application Programming Interface (API), so that the further application programming will be easier. Third-party packages can also be easily integrated into the system. Clear boundaries have been set between different components. The original implementation of the InPhase-System works only with Contiki and realizes only the basic function. Even though it can transmit the information via a communication network, it is still not usable when a more complicated system with RIOT wants to integrate the InPhase-System into the OS without extra communication cost. As a simple basic function, the InPhase-System is not portable and usable for other applications yet.

By porting the InPhase-System to the new operating system and the new hardware platform, on the one hand, the performance of the system could be improved. On the other hand, we can check whether the system is a portable approach and can be applied in the current most common situation. Only when the InPhase-System approach is capable of being widely used, then it is effective and meaningful.

Task

The InPhase-System will be ported to a new platform, which consists of RIOT as embedded operating system and AT86RF215 as the radio peripheral. After that a comparison with the old system will be analyzed and evaluated. At last a possible algorithm may be explored. RIOT, an open source operating system, will be used. The real-time feature may improve the efficiency of the measurement. The multi-threading feature can make the architecture of the application software simple and clean. The module InPhase Application of the InPhase-System should be optimized while porting. AT86RF215 will be used as the radio peripheral. A new driver for this peripheral should be written to suit the requirements. The module InPhase Sensor should also be rewritten correspondingly. A comparison with the old system will be executed. The case with only one transceiver working and the case with both two transceivers working will be separately tested.

Evaluation

After the template is designed and coded, it will be used to port the InPhase-System to different platforms. Considering the available hardware, radios (AT86RF233, AT86RF215) and processors (ATmega1284p, STM32F407, ATSAMR21, STM32G071), different combinations of these hardwares would be chosen. The corresponding changes will be listed to show the portability. The new platforms will be tested in the InPhase-Testbed. By comparing the measured distance with the real distance in the InPhase-Testbed the performance of the new platform will be evaluated. Factors that influence the measurement will be analyzed.

Links

• Hinweise zur Durchführung von studentischen Arbeiten am IBR