Abstract
Universal serial bus can be considered a cost-effective and high-throughput communication medium for sensor networks and multinode control or data acquisition systems, especially for prototyping purposes. In a prototype system, a PC or Mac computer with a general-purpose operating system is often selected as a host or root node for the USB bus and it acts as a central data collector, supervisory user interface, and network traffic scheduler. However, achieved communication performance is often unsatisfactory since USB stack drivers incorporated in Windows, Linux, or macOS operating systems are not optimised for such specific purposes. The paper shows how an appropriately selected and implemented user application communication schedule, making use of operating system drivers pipelining and multitasking capabilities, can substantially improve USB network throuahnut and reduce communication latency.
Highlights
A COMMUNICATION channel constitutes a crucial part of every sensor network, distributed data acquisition system, or a networked control system
Throughput corresponding to data transferred by IN transactions is characterised by two related measures: total network stream (TNS) and stream per node (SPN), satisfying the equation TNS = N × SPN where N is the number of active device nodes
Authors decided to include all results because they share a view expressed in [21]: It is understood that real time systems are not tested with a single analysis that pronounces them correct
Summary
A COMMUNICATION channel constitutes a crucial part of every sensor network, distributed data acquisition system, or a networked control system. For small-scale distributed control and data acquisition systems, a full-speed variant of the Universla Serial Bus (USB) 2.0 can be considered an attractive and convenient choice, especially well suited for prototyping purposes It provides lowcost, high-throughput communication channel with favourable performance-to-price ratio. Other authors present applications of multinode USB networks for various data collecting or control purposes, including industrial systems, home automation, or virtual instrumentation for power monitoring [10], [11], [12], [13], but do not investigate system performances extensively Such a study can be found in [14], while the problem of nodes synchronisation is addressed in [15], [16].
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary 
Published Version (
Free)
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call