Modeling and rapid prototyping of a distributed application using FPGAs

Current industrial applications are built with smart sensors and actuators. They are interconnected by means of local area networks or field buses. When these elements are designed, some of the most important factors to be considered are their reliability and performance. The Fault Tolerant Systems Group (GSTF) of the "Universidad Politecnica. de Valencia" (UPV) has been working on the developing of an architecture for distributed systems with high degree of reliability. The distributed system uses the Controller Area Network (CAN) as the communication backbone due to its versatility programming ease and availability of implementations [6]. In this article it is presented the modeling and rapid prototyping of a soft real-time application. The application is a greenhouse used for the cultivation of hydroponics crops. The greenhouse will be used by the "Instituto Valenciano de la Investigacion Agraria" (IVIA.) for the research on complex cultivation systems. The greenhouse has been developed using a design methodology based on Hardware and Software co-design [7][8] and software tools [9] developed and implemented by the GSTF group. They are written in C++ and Java. They use a client-server architecture using Corba. The main objective is to use our design methodology for the development of a real application. The prototype has been built using Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs.) The software needed to develop applications using FPGAs and demo boards have both been donated to the ''Universidad Politecnica de Valencia" by Xilinx Inc [11][12].