FPGA application for wireless monitoring in power plant

Abstract

The process of automation and monitoring in industrial control system involves the use of many types of sensors. A programmable logic controller plays an important role in the automation of the different processes in the power plant system. The major control units are boiler for temperature and pressure, turbine for speed of motor, generator for voltage, conveyer belt for fuel. The power plant units are controlled using microcontrollers and PLCs, but FPGA can be the feasible solution. The paper focused on the design and simulation of hardware chip to monitor boiler, turbine, generator and conveyer belt. The hardware chip of the plant is designed in Xilinx Vivado Simulator 17.4 software using VHDL programming. The methodology includes VHDL code design, simulation, verification and testing on Virtex-5 FPGA hardware. The system has four independent buzzers used to indicate the status of the boiler, generator, turbine motor and conveyer belt in on/off conditions respectively. The GSM is used to display corresponding message on the mobile to know the status of the device in on/off condition. The system is very much helpful for the industries working on plant automation with FPGA hardware integration.

Keywords

• Power plant
• Field programmable gate array
• VHDL programming
• Wireless monitoring