High level communication interface design for integrated MEMS and microinstrument bus
M. Rodriguez, Eduardo Magdaleno, Carles Ferrer, B. Lorente, A. Ayala · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 2005
A microelectromechanical system (MEMS) merges integrated sensors, microactuators, and low-power electronics. These systems normally have a local sensor communication bus managed by a master node. The purpose of this work is to implement a communication interface that permit connect the integrated MEMS local bus (through the master node) with on a high level microinstrument communication bus. The basic philosophy of this development has been to create an IP model with VHDL for the bus module interface. This interface can be added easily to a microsystem and from of point of view of microinstrument design methodology, MEMS based in this interface module could be easily plugged with the other microsystems on microinstrument architecture. The IP developed is based on the concept of Interface File System (IFS) that contains all relevant information of the microsystem. The use of the IFS in integrated microsystems design permits to insulate its particular characteristics from the whole of microinstrument. Also, this IFS has associated a communication model that allows different views of the system, such as, real-time or command service view, configuration and diagnostic service view. Implementation experiences presented in this paper show that the IFS reduces the complexity of microinstrument applications and make easy the MEMS reuse in other microinstruments. The communication module based on IFS was successfully tested between microsystems based on local sensor bus namely IBIS (Interconnection Bus for Integrated Sensors) and a generic real time microinstrument bus.