Development Of Serial Device Net Server Based On ARM And μClinux

In the power system automization and other industry control fields, many devices still use serial port to communicate each other. Serial port is widely used for its facility, reliability, and ability. However, the most important weakness of serial port is that it can't be networked and can't be accessed from long distance, which is the foundation of industry control automation. These years, people are looking for a low-cost solution to enhance the network ability of old devices.Serial port net server is a stand-alone unit to provide network ability for serial devices. It transforms the communication data style between the host and serial devices, and packages the serial data into TCP/IP datagram to make it possible to transmit the data through network.This paper describes the system design and development process of the serial port net server that based on the ARM processor and μClinux embedded OS, mainly include three parts. Part one describes the hardware design and implement, as well as the embedded system design summary that based on the ARM platform. Part two is about the firmware development, talks about the build of embedded μClinux environment, the design of TL16C554 UART device driver, and some skills in the use of semaphore and multithread. Part three focus on the Windows device driver development of the net server, talk about basic structure and design guide of the WDM device driver, the virtual serial port driver connected with network driver is discussed in detail here. At last, the function test and performance test result of this net server is shown.