Sensors: the road from signal to information
Alexandru-Cristian Marinica · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 2012
This paper describes a real case of methodologies and hardware and software systems used to build the road from electrical signal to information. The information in this paper is organized and presented with respect to ISA-95 standard [1], which is the international standard for the integration of enterprise and control systems. The road consists of data acquisition from sensors, software processing, data interpretation, data transmission and historization. The paper handles data acquisition circuits, transforming data into information using original algorithms developed under LabVIEW environment, sending the information to a remote database by using different kind of transmission mediums (ex. fiber optics, copper) and communication protocols (ex. Modbus, TCP/IP, OPC). The novelty consists of the LabVIEW algorithms and methods of using graphical elements on the user interface, which are actually the instruments that transforms data into information. This kind of systems is commonly used in industrial automation applications and laboratories with contribution in increasing efficiency, quality and safety of production processes. The main achievement is a powerful and robust solution that suits for different kind of industries. My personal contribution is the software application and achieving an original synthesis, study and approach of data acquisition and transmission systems.