Design and development of microcontroller based data acquisition system with ethernet communication for nuclear power plants

Abstract

A nuclear reactor and process control systems consists of various continuous process signals coming from the various sensors and transmitters placed at different locations in the field including hazardous area. The accurate measurement of these process parameters is very important in order to carry out control operation properly. The signals from the sensors or transmitters may be analog or digital. To perform the operation on the signals it is necessary to have the data acquisition system(DAS). There are many DAS available in the market which are not much reliable and rugged to use for such applications, where reliability, ruggedness, easy maintenance, long term support are the main issues. To handle these issues the system is designed using high speed Microcontroller with Ethernet controller ENC28J60. The microcontroller has In-Circuit Serial Programming Facility(ICSP). It is also possible to communicate through LAN so that one can have access and control over the system far away from hazardous area. The measurement of analog signals is very difficult as compared to digital signals because the analog signals are affected by the interference noise, Electro-Static Discharge(ESD) and Electro-Magnetic Interference(EMI). Therefore, the protection of process signal from these interferences is very important. This system is provided with the additional provisions for over voltage, ESD, EMI protection, signal Isolation, interference noise and noise filtering. Therefore, DAS with all above features will be very suitable for the various applications including process industries.