Smart Transducers - Principles, Communications, and Configuration
Wilfried Elmenreich, Stefan Pitzek · 2003
Abstract — Transducers are sensors and actuators in order that a computer system can interact with the physical environment. An intelligent or smart trans-ducer is the integration of an analog or digital sensor or actuator element, a processing unit, and a communi-cation interface. In this paper we describe the basic de-sign principles for smart transducers and compare two smart transducer interface standards, the IEEE 1451.2 STI and the OMG STI, with respect to general design decisions and the management of configuration infor-mation in particular. The IEEE 1451.2 standard favors the introduction of self-contained nodes, which keep the configuration data physically associated to the nodes. In contrast, the OMG STI standard follows the approach of keeping memory requirements on nodes very low and instead enforces a tight integration of smart transducer systems with software tools and external system descrip-tions in a general configuration framework. 1