An adaptive industrial boiler automation application using FPGA & GSM

Abstract

The revolution of automation on factory floors is a key driver for the more demand for higher productivity, lower total cost of ownership, and high safety. As a result, industrial applications drive a more demand of higher data bandwidth and higher system-level performance. This article describes the trends of industrial applications and FPGA enable solutions to meet design goals. The broad range of FPGA devices - ranging from low cost and low power to higher content and higher performance, facilitates designs in varying ranges of complexity, from simple I/O expansion to complex computation and system integration. FPGAs meet critical timing and performance requirements with parallel processing and real-time industrial application performance, permitting greater system integration and lower development cost. We propose the design and implementation of boiler automation, the water level in the main tank is controlled by a water level sensor, each boiler has two pipes, one is inlet other one is outlet and the pipes valves are controlled by temperature sensors located in each boiler. From the GSM mobile phone, the user will be able to get information about the current temperature in any boiler by simply sending a boiler identification number. When the temperature inside any boiler reach a maximum presented value, the system will send a SMS to the user informing that the maximum temperature has been reached. The design can be described using VHDL (VHSIC Hardware Description Language) and implemented in hardware using FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array), GSM modem and sensors.