High-performance fieldbus application-specific integrated circuit design for industrial smart sensor networks

Smart sensor networks (SSNs) play a crucial role in an industrial internet of things (IIoT). SSNs are also a key enabling technology for future IIoT. The main challenge in designing these networks is coping with the reliability and real-time communication limitations that characterize the network architecture. In this manuscript, first, a master/slave SSN architecture based on the high-performance Modbus communication protocol was proposed. An SSN with this architecture consists of a master controller and distributed slave sensors. Next, a smart sensor management engine that enables the control of sensor node addition, insertion, removal, automatic configuring, error processing in, and ID management of the sensor network was designed for the SSN master controller. Finally, two high-performance Modbus application-specific integrated circuits were developed for the SSN master and SSN slave. The proposed SSN solution improves the SSN performance 100 times compared with the conventional software solution. Moreover, the smart sensor management engine embedded in the master facilitates superior re-configurability, maintainability, and reliability of the SSN. Experimental results show our high-performance Modbus ASIC can satisfy the requirements of industrial and smart sensor IoT.