BBPCI Network Adapter for Nuclear Power Plants

DICS Intertrade Ltd, based in Sofia, Bulgaria, is involved in research and development of monitoring and control solutions through the production of complete turnkey systems, as well as customer-defined modules.

Some of the main projects the company was involved in are:

• Fodder producing plants
• Washing powder installations
• Breweries
• Oil refineries
• Embedded hardware and software for automated packing machine manufacturers
• Control and monitoring systems for Nuclear Power Plants
• Building automation and others

In the recent years the company has specialized in research, development and production of safety related control systems. 32 protection systems are now in operation in the Nuclear Power Plants (NPP) of Bulgaria and Russia. Alongside these systems the company has also developed monitoring systems, containing controllers and PC based workstations. The controllers acquire data from detectors that are responsible for the proper work of the NPP. The data is transferred to computer stations with monitoring SCADA software. All these systems went through comprehensive testing and analysis under the supervision of international inspecting authorities and were licensed by the national supervisory institutions of Bulgaria and Russia.

BBPCI Network Adapter
BBPCI, developed and produced according to the specific requirements of NPP Kozloduy, is a PCI BBPCI network adapter, which is part of a Unit Monitoring and Operator Information Support System. Its function is to connect BITBUS network to the computer system on the basis of PCI interface and to enable the exchange of data between the work station and the network nodes.

BBPCI Network Adapter

BBPCI is PCI Spec. v.2.1 (5V signaling) compatible. It can be mounted on platforms with PCI connection 32-bit/5V or 64-bit/5V. BITBUS is a fieldbus based on standard technologies like RS-485 and SDLC. Its simple to use Master-Slave communication mechanism allows a master to communicate with up to 249 slaves. BITBUS is an international standard and also known as IEEE-1118. For more information about BITBUS refer to: http://www.bitbus.org/.

BBPCI has two versions: one is provided for synchronous work (sending and receiving data) and the other is designed for asynchronous communication. The rate of the communication varies from 62,5 to 375 Kbaud when the asynchronous version is used depending on the distance between two nodes and achieves 2,4 Mbaud when the synchronous version is used.

The software included in the package with the BBPCI module consists of two programs:. The first manages the communication with the BITBUS network and is uploaded in the MCU that runs the module. The other is a driver program used to connect the module to the PC through a PCI slot.

WinDriver Usage in the BBPCI
As a result of a recommendation from PLX Technology, the manufacturer of the PCI9050-1 and PCI9052 interface chips, Jungo's WinDriver PCI was selected for developing the driver for the BBPCI. "WinDriver was selected because of its good credentials received mainly through articles, the Internet and recommendations from the manufacturer of the interface IC for PCI slot. The alternative was to develop a driver from a scratch which was a daunting prospect because of the little time and even less resources which our company had at the time." Said Vladimir Dragoev, Design Engineer at DICS Intertrade. "All of the above were enough reasons to persuade our company to try Jungo's WinDriver, a choice that has not disappointed us since."

The driver main purpose is to establish a connection between the BBPCI module and the PC through the PCI slot using Windows 2000. Using Jungo's WinDriver, DICS Intertrade was able to easily handle the special requirements including the feature of sending an interrupt request from the module to the PC to enable the PC to reset the module. Since the BBPCI adapter uses a Dual Port RAM for a data buffer between the BITBUS network and the monitoring station, the driver has to manage PC's requests to this RAM and the access time must be less than 100 ms which is the timeout from the other side of the communication.

Before establishing connection between PC and BBPCI module, the driver initiates the resources of the PCI add-on card: registry, memory fields, semaphores for Dual Port RAM access, etc. Then it periodically checks for existing and valid connection with BBPCI and if exits, it begins the data transfer. The data is a buffer consisting of parameters sent by network nodes, representing their state and information from the detectors. After receiving this buffer, the program sends it to higher-level software called SCADA, which is used for monitoring (see diagram above)

Company Contact Details:
DICS Intertrade Ltd
Tsarigradsko Shosee 7-th km
Sofia 1784
Bulgaria
Tel: +359 (2) 778400
Tel/Fax: +359 (2) 9743458
Website: http://www.dicsintertrade.com/

About WinDriver
Jungo's WinDriver™ automates and simplifies the development of user-mode device drivers and applications for USB / PCI / PCI Express / CardBus / ISA / PCMCIA / PMC / PCI-X / PCI-104 and CompactPCI under Windows 98/Me/NT/2000/XP/XP Embedded/ Server 2003, Windows CE, Linux, Solaris and VxWorks. WinDriver provides a complete solution for creating high performance drivers and custom hardware access applications, thereby enabling developers to focus on their driver's added-value functionality, instead of on operating system internals and the DDK. Enhanced Built-in support is available for Actel, Altera, Atmel, CATC, Cypress, National Semiconductor, PLDA, PLX, Netchip, QuickLogic, Silicon Laboratories, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Xilinx.

About Jungo
Jungo Software Technologies is a leading supplier of driver development tools, hardware access applications, embedded USB solutions and residential gateway software. Jungo has partnered with leading operating system and silicon vendors to provide the best solutions to software and hardware developers. Jungo is a privately held company with corporate offices in San Jose, California, sales and support offices in Taipei, Texas and London and an R&D center in Israel. Founded in 1998, Jungo's investors include Conexant Systems, Infineon Ventures, Intel Communications Fund, Partech International and TeleSoft Partners.