2009 Ninth International Conference on Hybrid Intelligent Systems

Online Monitoring and Intelligent Diagnosis System Based on Hybrid Wireless Network for Large Complicated Equipment
ZHANG Jinyu, CAI Wei, HUANG Xianxiang, XIE Jian
Xian Research Institute of High-tech Xian, Shaanxi 710025, China E-mail: mejyzhng@hotmail.com
AbstractAimed at the characteristics of huge systems, complicated distributed structures and difficult fault diagnosis of large equipments, an extensible system of distributed online monitoring and multi-level intelligent fault diagnosis based on hybrid wireless network techniques was presented and designed. The entire system includes four hierarchys subsystems. The first subsystem is monitoring sensors and Zigbee network. It is responsible to gain various data of equipments in a non-intrusive mode. The second one is monitoring and transmission network. It consists of embedded system ARM920T and relative multiple single-chips, and is responsible to receive and integrate all information of the previous subsystem. The third one is online and offline monitoring subsystem based on wireless protocol 802.11b. The final one is multi-level intelligent diagnosis and management system. The results of practical operation show that, because of the using of hybrid wireless network, embedded system and multilevel intelligent diagnosis, the system may be flexibly deployed, have powerful capability of monitoring, diagnosis and management, and can implement expeditious and accurate fault positioning and diagnosis for large equipment system. Keywords-Technology of Instrument and Meter, Online Monitoring, Hybrid Wireless Network, Embedded System, Intelligent Fault Diagnosis

needs of operation on site and replacement of modern largescale complicated equipment system. Therefore, in this paper, we will work on the exploration of structure, composition and key technologies of new distributed wireless on-line monitoring and intelligent diagnosis system. II. CHARACTERISTICS OF A LARGE AND COMPLICATED EQUIPMENT

I.

INTRODUCTION

Large-scale complicated mechanical and electrical equipment, because of the characteristics such as its huge structure, complicated function of the large number of professionals involved in a wide range, complexity of the operation control, poor working environment, the use of high requirement, huge failure loss and so on, has been attached great importance in the engineering area. Their on-line monitoring and fault diagnosis have made more costeffective benefit [1]. Its difficulties are the on-line monitoring system design, integrated research and development of intelligent diagnosis [2]. In recent years, with the development of wireless networks, sensors and fault diagnosis technology, many scholars have carried out an indepth study based on the proposed wireless network. The monitoring and diagnosis system also made clear effect [1-3]. However, it is not difficult to find that in these reports these work are the basic work of a single subsystem, either the main electronic control system or the major mechanical systems for the service, not a comprehensive and flexible monitoring and diagnosis for the entire large-scale complicated mechanical and electrical equipment all aspects of the system. In particular it is very difficult to meet the
978-0-7695-3745-0/09 $25.00 2009 IEEE DOI 10.1109/HIS.2009.188 373

A large-scale complicated system is a large collection of mechanical and electrical equipment such as electronic, hydraulic, optical, precision machinery, computers, and automatic control technology in one. Because the main chain of control uses its closed-loop control system, the equipment uses multiple industrial control computers and complicated relay logic control circuits. The system is large, and needs multi-step operation. The degree of automation is very high. The complexity of the signal transmission, complicated conversion nodes, together with the equipment often in a state of traffic, poor working environment and changes in temperature and humidity, and thus the equipment is prone to take place a variety of equipment failure. In site to achieve rapid fault detection and diagnosis, to ensure its health is in good condition, the on-line realtime monitoring and comprehensive intelligent diagnosis to the system must be implemented. The equipment, in the structure, includes a power supply system, a hydraulic system, an electronic control system and a mechanical system. The main power supply system consists of a diesel generator units and its distribution system, which is responsible for the system providing a wide range of AC and DC power supply. The electronic control system is the control center of the main terminal and program-controlled device. It controls the scattered devices of the measurement and implementation. The hydraulic system is mainly composed of a gear pump, fuel tanks and all kinds of electromagnetic valves and so on, which is the main executor. The mechanical system is the foundation of the entire system and transport platform. These systems are independent each other and close contact with the structure. They possess a large number of functions, high degree of automation as a whole. The information which needs to be monitored in systems includes the digital codes in the serial port communication, switch signals, analog signals and so on, which contains three categories of information of several hundreds of points. Here the serial port information includes control orders, the

condition information of sensor and actuator between the computer terminal and control computer. The information is such large amounts of data, changes in the fast. The switching information is mainly all kinds of condition information from additional sensors of a variety of card and implement device. This information indicates if the relevant parts and components are working properly. The object number of this kind of information is big one, but smaller capacity. The analog information mainly comes from mechanical and hydraulic system components by sensors, which is such rich information, high sampling requests, has large amounts of data. In addition, the system still exist a large number of knowledge and text information which can be used to describe the fact. In terms of a detailed analysis of information sources and characteristics, we know the nature of the information, content, capacity, time and space are not the same. They need not only being able to do an indepth exploration of large flow of digital and high switching capacity information of the various boards within the system, but also monitoring the various switches information and condition information of the distribution of a larger space scope. To achieve more efficient and accurate diagnosis of this type of large-scale complicated systems and equipment, the specific work steps and step-by-step process automation must be equipped with information collection and synthesis of the rational and appropriate use of a variety of knowledge and rules to cross the evidence to determine the current equipment specific work step and the state of equipment.
Equipment

III.

SOLUTION OF TECHNOLOGY

According to the structural characteristics of the equipment and working mechanism, we have carefully analyzed the characteristics of the system signal distribution, calculated the flow of information between subsystem and subsystem, taken into account the time-delay request of various types of information on the test, adopted a hybrid testing network combined with Zigbee based lowspeed networks and IEEE 802.11b high-speed network. As the complexity of large equipment, many of the components (such as electro- magnetic valve) scattered by space and have less information, but the information to their equipment condition is very critical to determine. So a large number of few information points are formed. There are also some important scattered analog information points. By means of the small size of Zigbee-node set on these parts and the low-speed low-power Zigbee network, the monitoring data are sent to control node, which is installed in the information-intensive electronic control system in the vicinity. A large number of the real-time measurement information is synchronized and encoded, then upload the data to the host system to monitor by the high-speed IEEE802.11b wireless network. As the flow of information and treatment asymmetric requirements, a multiple singlechip system cascade solution is requisite. By means of the match band width and ad hoc network protocol design technology, the different types of network are combined into a more convenient and better information flow of mixed

W Zigbee Network Control Node W B Memory IEEE 802.11 Channel Monitoring & Diagnosis Monitoring & Diagnosis USB Bus

W B

WB

Data-bus

Wireless Node

Bus Node

WB

Hybrid Node

Bus Data

Wireless Data Figure.1 Hybrid network for data acquisition of large system

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monitoring network. The system mainly includes the ZigBee protocol wireless-node, field-testing bus node, hybrid node, control node, 802.11b communications channel transmission, and monitoring and diagnosis computer. The system block diagram is in Figure 1. IV. HYBRID NETWORK MONITORING SYSTEM

A. ZigBee Wireless Monitoring Network Design ZigBee (IEEE802.15.4) is a rising short-range, lowpower, low-speed, low-cost wireless networking technology. Thousands of such tiny sensor nodes can cooperate and communicate at relay mode in an efficient and safe way. It mainly applies to the network-building of local scene in the peer-to-peer networks. The wireless network monitoring in figure 1 is one containing a control node on equipment, a series of nodes installed in the terminal equipment, some bus nodes and some hybrid nodes. The control node communicates with the terminal wireless nodes and hybrid nodes through the ZigBee protocol. The control node is configured to a coordinator. The hybrid node is full function device, but terminal nodes generally are some tidy function devices. Analog signal wireless terminal nodes are mainly responsible for the data collection and transmission of large amounts of data of the test point of scattered location. For example, the hydraulic electromagnetic valve, motor, as well as oil pump, etc., which are the key components in equipment. In the past few go on-line monitoring, it has not been a good way to monitor. In order to monitor the movements of valve core and the changes of the magnetic field, we installed an accelerometer and a magnetic sensor on the JN5121 module circuit board, and the circuit board fixed on the valve in the middle by a permanent magnet, shown in Figure 2. JN5121 module will sample and send the analog signal of solenoid valve sensor through ZigBee node. The corresponding JN5121 module in control node will receive the data. The single-chip then read them through the serial port, as shown in Figure 3.

communications and control information of the electronic control system are directly acquired and adjusted by the monitoring single-chip of electronic control system through bus-node in a non-intervention way, then synchronized and integrated with the former, and put in the final control node. In order to achieve the non-involvement in the monitoring of the digital information we have adopted a parallel way to bring out the signal. Generally, a pair of plugs and sockets are joined in the cable between the plug and socket adapters to detect signals from the joints in the lead. In order not to affect the actual signal parameters, the system has adopted a high-input impedance probe. This work will be able to process all types of signals effectively and can monitor realtime control system running, and would not affect the normal operation of the entire equipment, and get better separation of detection equipment and instrument, lay a solid foundation of on-line monitoring for the realization.

Fig. 3 solenoid valve sensor data acquisition and receiving network

Fig.2, Electromagnetic valve sensor layout

Digital wireless node is mainly responsible for the data acquisition and transmission of spread few information points, because of its large number of simultaneous requests, also belonging to the necessary information of the electronic control system to monitor, so the nodes directly connect to monitoring single-chip of electronic control system through the hybrid node. And a large number of digital

B. Design of Multiple Single-chip Mixed-cascade Wireless Network 802.11b networks is a similar protocol to Zigbee developed by IEEE for wireless communication standards, which used a transmission mode of high-rate direct sequence spread spectrum (HR / DSSS), 2.4G in the ISM band, and 11Mbps, 5.5Mbps, 2Mbps or 1Mbps in the light of environmental changes and several hundred meters away with the wireless transmission of high-level agreement. So it is more suitable for wireless computer local area network. By a wireless bridge connecting relay, you can cover a wider area and more equipment and form a complete on-site monitoring network. By means of WEB technology and fiber network operational command, the remote monitoring and remote diagnostics services can be achieved. As a result, it works as the protocol of communications network of the intelligent diagnosis system to achieve a greater range wireless connection. However, in order to achieve a perfect online monitoring and diagnosis system, these two wireless networks need to be seamlessly connected to form a highspeed data security chain. Therefore, we first need to cascade the testing single-chip of electronic control system and the single-chip of control node together, then integrate them and the ARM9 embedded system with 802.11b through the serial port, where ARM will be responsible for data exchange, integration and forward, form a mixed set of wireless data collection, transmission and monitoring network. Intelligent monitoring and diagnosis system commonly used notebook
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computers to collect data of the machine through on-site monitoring and 802.11b networks. The upper monitoring and lower computer form a digital master-slave mode. In terms of actual needs of one or more large-scale equipment, a number of uppers may be installed and are responsible for all types of real-time sensor data collection, standardize processing and data upload. The notebook computer is generally put at the scene edge or away from the scene to work as a server of real time on-site monitoring, and carry out intelligent diagnosis. As a backup, host PC can also use a USB interface to connect to the on-site network and complete the work of the monitoring and diagnosis. V. DESIGN OF ON-LINE MONITORING SYSTEM The primary task of on-line monitoring system is quickly to get the data from on-site monitoring network of hybrid wireless, then to determine the work state of the equipment, and to judge equipment failure. A. Communication Software Design Communication software first needs to create a wireless communications server environment and a wireless access point AP in the notebook computer, and set up the necessary parameters, then establish a wireless client in the ARM and configure relative parameters, finally, design two sets of special interactive communication software. The first set client program is achieved by using DELPHI7 and Indy9 control in the ARM under the Linux environment. The second set server software is also programmed by using Delphi7 and Indy9 control program under the Windows environment. The monitor server listens to the designated port and IP network at any time. Once a request occurs, the server immediately verifies its legitimacy and security, then sends back a shook hands information. After the client receive a permission server send, the client immediately sends the norms data that client have acquired. The server uses the same definition of norms to read data and transmit to the on-line monitoring system. In order to improve network speed of real-time monitoring, we specially designed a multi-thread process, and created an independent space in the computer memory to serve data transmission between two independent processes. At the same time, we designed a process of inter-messaging mechanisms, and timely informed relevant process to receive new monitoring data. B. Design of On-line Monitoring System The main functions of on-line monitoring system is to actualize the on-line real-time monitoring, program control, synchronous simulation display, timely diagnosis as well as the preservation of data of the entire work state of the equipment. The on-line monitoring module is responsible for monitoring the process of communication to send data. If finding new data, it reads data at once, and then checks the integrity of data. If the checking fails, the diagnosis window will show "checking fails" information and return. If passed, go to the next step.
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The program control module is responsible for achieving the control of whole modules, data flow, information flow, as well as error-oriented processing and so on. The entire monitoring program adopts multi-threaded parallel work mode. The advantages of parallel mode are suitable to efficient processing of uncertain data flow. The basic control processes include data validation, data interprettation, synchronous simulation display, preservation of the monitoring data, the state timing, the state cross reference, fault diagnosis, issuing diagnosis results and so on. There are four diagnosis rules. The rule 1: the condition has been determined by the front-end equipment, such as a communication failure, a failure of IO port, directly shows it. The second rule is to judge the condition based on the comparison of the real measured state of program and order words of the communication between the man-control computer and program-control computer. The third rule is time control. If the interval of issuing appropriate action is more than a standard working hours of the process, or after the man-control sends an order, any information of the relevant movement cant be gotten by the right time, we may judge it belongs to the parts failure or slow under this rule. The fourth rule is to call a special tool of the signal processing for analysis, feature extraction, monitoring and diagnosis to the analog data. Aiming to simulation display module design, we used a set of industrial control software of virtual instrument to design exactly a set of the same man-machine interface with the man-control terminal menu, which can in time display the same information of man-control terminal according to the work condition of the equipment, can also be manual control to facilitate the monitoring personnel to grasp flexibly the state of equipment. Because the diagnostic modules works in a parallel mode with a lot of flexibility, it may easily realize the condition monitoring and fault diagnosis of four work mode such as the positive step-by-step process, the negative stepby-step process, the positive simulation process and the negative simulation process of the equipment. VI. DESIGN OF INTELLIGENT DIAGNOSIS SYSTEM

The service object of the on-line monitoring and diagnosis system is mostly the electronic control system and part of the hydraulic system of the equipment. The objects of the monitoring and diagnosis are always limited and with a limited extensiveness. In fact, large complicated equipment involves in many questions in the work. In order to achieve a high level diagnosis, an intelligent diagnosis system must be introduced. That is why we specially designed three separate intelligent diagnosis system based on the monitoring and diagnosis. A. CLIPS-based Expert Diagnosis System CLIPS is a genuine rule-based expert system tools in Windows environment. The main design objectives and

characteristics are to get a wide range of versatility and good extensiveness. It runs fast and has high ability of uncertain reasoning. We integrate the CLIPS reasoning and the environment into the system, and design a Chinese human-computer interface. According to the subsystems and components, we also finish the knowledge representation, knowledge organization and refining and use of rules. The built system is effective to carry out an expert diagnosis and give repair countermeasures on the equipment and systems at the same time. B. Integrated Information Management System of Failure and Maintenance of Equipment Equipment and systems in his service period always have a number of breakdowns and maintenance experience and knowledge that can be learnt as a lesson. There are a large number of drawings, books and maintenance norms available. And in some cases, there are some audio and video materials of use, maintenance and training available. So we designed a comprehensive information management system. The system is designed by using DELPHI7 and databases, is a knowledge-based database management system, and now has collected more than 200 real faults, reason information and the knowledge for troubleshooting drawn in practice. At the same time, the drawings, data, and multimedia information are also managed by the database management system, formed a comprehensive information management system. Based on the actual needs, the on-line monitoring and diagnosis system can rapidly queries the information related to failure to guide the work of maintenance. C. General Diagnostic Expert System of Equipment Large-scale complicated automation systems have many common points. They are generally integrated electrical and hydraulic machines, and there are many common places in their failure, maintenance and management. In order to improve the intelligence level of diagnostic services, we also used VB and CLIPS6 to design a general expert diagnostic system of including thousands of fault-related knowledge and rules. If the previous monitoring, diagnosis

and intelligent diagnosis cant solve the problem, the system can provide a wider range of diagnostic services. This three sets of intelligent diagnosis and management system are not only independent each other, but also close relative each other. They together with the on-line monitoring system form an entire intelligent diagnosis system, which is characterized by the good expansion, high universality, and its knowledge and information can be continuously enriched, can also be used to different complicated systems. VII. CONCLUSIONS The system synthetically uses hybrid wireless network technology, high-performance multi-parallel testing, more collaborative process monitoring, multi-level integrated intelligent diagnosis, detection of non-intervention, highspeed data link, virtual instruments technology and so on, overcame many problems such as complicated cable connecting, poor reliability, bad fault location and limited functions of general monitoring and diagnostic testing system, and greatly improves the system reliability, flexibility of operation and accuracy of fault location, and has successfully developed a on-line monitoring and integrated intelligent fault diagnosis system of equipment with a high rate of accurate diagnosis, Real-time, high degree of automation and other characteristics. ACKNOWLEDGMENT This work is supported by China Postdoctoral Science Foundation under Grant 20080431392. REFERENCES
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