Design of Tyre Safety Pre-alarm System

Based on ARM9
A.Harris Stephenraj*1, Mr. P. Anantha Christhu Raj*2, G. Baskar*3
*
Department of Electronics and Instrumentation Engineering,
Karunya University, Coimbatore,
Tamilnadu-641 114, India
1
harris.stephenraj@gmail.com
2
ganesh.baskar@gmail.com
3
anantha.be@gmail.com

Abstract An Intelligent Tyre Pressure
Monitoring System (TPMS) is presented. The tyre burst
used to cause fatal traffic accidents, threatening the safety
of drivers and property, in cognizance of this problem, we
have come up with an intelligent tyre safety pre-alarm
system. The hardware components of tyre pressure
monitoring system are introduced. The whole system is
composed of a host module and four wireless sensors. The
four wireless sensors are installed in tyres, monitoring the
pressure and temperature of tyres in real time and
sending them to center monitoring host through wireless
module (Zigbee).The read pressure value is converted to
digital value and transmitted to the host module in the
dashboard. The host module gives a visible and audible
alarm to the driver about the tyre condition.
Key wordsTyre pressure, ARM9, Zigbee
I.INTRODUCTION
Tire Pressure Monitoring helps drivers to
properly maintain their vehicle tires, improves
vehicle safety and aid fuel efficiency. The
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
(NHTSA) in the US has estimated that 533
fatalities per annum are caused by tire defects in
road accidents. Adding TPMS to all vehicles could
avoid 120 of the 533 yearly victims and save as
many as 8,400 injuries every year. Scurit
Routire (the French Institution for Road Safety)
estimates that 9% of all fatal road accidents are
attributable to tire under-inflation and the German
DEKRA estimated that 41% of accidents with
physical injuries are linked to tire problems. Tyres
leak air naturally and over a year a typical new tire
can lose between 3 and 9 psi. As most drivers only
check their tyres at service intervals and when
problems occur there is significant scope for fuel
savings and efficiencies.
mandatory use of TPMS. The TPMS mandated by
the US law must warrn the driver when a tyre is
under-inflated by as much as 25%.
These systems report real-time tire-pressure
information to the driver of the vehicle, either via
a gauge, a pictogram display, or a simple low-
pressure warning light.
A. SYSTEM COMPOSITION
The intelligent tyre safety pre-alarm
system using direct style monitoring is composed
of 4 monitoring modules and a host module. Tire
pressure monitoring module with sensor and
ZigBee are installed in tyre, taking charge of
monitoring the pressure of tyre and transmitting
this data to host module through ZigBee
technology; The host module with ZigBee
transceiver, audible and visual alarm and LCD
module are installed in the dashboard. The ZigBee
transceiver takes up data from 4 tyre pressure
monitoring modules and show pressure of 4 tyres
on LCD module visually so that the driver can
grasp pressure and temperature state of each tyre.
The host module gives out audible and visible
signals to driver for warning of pulling up and
taking relevant measure to make sure the vehicles
driving stability.
The host module is based on ARM9 controller.
It is very easy to extend other functions because of
the abundant resource on ARM9, for example, car
telephone, GPS navigation, video reverse radar
and car multimedia. The low power consumption
feature of Zigbee and ARM processor makes it
more suitable for automobiles.

Given this background and prompted by the

Firestone recall (where one hundred deaths due to
roll-overs were attributed to tyre separation) the
US Federal government has legislated for the
 logical and economical choice for the automotive
system engineer.
The input pressure range is0 to 36.3 psi and the
corresponding output range is 0.2 to 4.9 V
The characteristics of the pressure sensor is
shown below.

5
4.5

Output Voltage in Volts

4
3.5
3
Fig 1. System Composition
2.5
2
1.5
1
0.5
0
Output voltage
0 10 20 30 40
Pressure in psi
Fig 3.Characteristics of MPX4250

III. ZIGBEE

ZigBee is a wireless communication

Fig 2. Block Diagram of the proposed system
II.PRESSURE SENSOR
The MPX4250 series piezoresistive transducer
is a state-of-the-art monolithic silicon pressure
sensor designed for a wide range of applications,
particularly those employing a microcontroller or
microprocessor with A/D inputs. This transducer
combines advanced micromachining techniques,
thinfilm metallization, and bipolar processing to
provide an accurate, high-level analog output
signal that is proportional to the applied pressure.
The small form factor and high reliability of on-
chip integration make the Freescale sensor a
protocol for low power, low rate, reliable, and
secured wireless personal area network, developed
by ZigBee Alliance based on IEEE 802.15.4
Standard.
A ZigBee network is a multi-hop network with
battery-powered devices. This means that two
devices that wish to exchange data in a ZigBee
network may have to depend on other intermediate
devices to be able to successfully do so. Because
of this cooperative nature of the network, proper
functioning requires that each device
(i) perform specific networking functions
(ii) configure certain parameters to specific
values.
The set of networking functions that a device
performs determines the role of the device in the
network and is called a device type. The set of
parameters that need to be configured to specific
values, along with those values, is called a stack
profile.
 The Zigbee SoC used is CC2431. The CC2431
is a true System-on-Chip (SoC) solution
specifically tailored for IEEE 802.15.4 and ZigBee
applications. It enables ZigBee nodes to be built
with very low total billof- material costs. The
CC2431 combines the excellent performance of
the leading CC2420 RF transceiver with an
industry-standard enhanced 8051 MCU, 128 KB
flash memory, 8 KB RAM and many other
powerful features. Combined with the industry
leading ZigBee protocol stack (Z-Stack) from
Figure 8 Wireless / Chipcon, the CC2431 provides
the markets most competitive ZigBee solution.
The CC2431 is highly suited for systems where
ultra low power consumption is required. This is
ensured by various operating modes. Short
transition times between operating modes further
ensure low power consumption.

Fig 4. Flowchart for Tyre module

IV. ARM

The ARM (Advanced RISC machine)

architecture is a 32-bit RISC processor
architecture developed by ARM Limited that is
widely used in embedded designs. Because of their
power saving features, ARM CPUs are dominant
in the mobile electronics market, where low power
consumption is a critical design goal. Today, the
ARM family accounts for approximately 75% of
all embedded 32-bit RISC CPUs, making it the
most widely used 32-bit architecture. ARM CPUs
are found in most corners of consumer electronics,
from portable devices (PDAs, mobile phones,
iPods and other digital media and music players,
handheld gaming units, and calculators) to
computer peripherals (hard drives, desktop
routers). However, since the decline of ARM Ltd's
former parent company Acorn Computers, it no
longer designs chips oriented towards desktop or
main processor functions, and has never been used
in a supercomputer or cluster. Prominent branches
in this family include Marvell's (formerly Intel's) Fig 5. Flowchart for Host module
XScale and the Texas Instruments OMAP series. VI.CONCLUSION
The intelligent tire safety pre-alarm system
V. SOFTWARE
The software architecture of both tyre module can directly detect the tyre pressure and find
and the Host module is shown out hidden danger to take effective measures,
and make sure that vehicles driving stability
when the tire appears abnormal symptoms,
especially when vehicles are running at high
speed. It is very easy to extend other functions
because of the abundant resource on ARM, for
example, car telephone, GPS navigation,
video reverse radar and car multimedia.
On completion, the system will be a
more reliable system than those available in
the markets. Due to the encryption feature
available in ZigBee the system becomes
immune to security threats. As advanced
controller is introduced it can monitor almost
all systems on the vehicle so the space
occupied by wiring harnesses can be reduced
and complexity in design of electrical systems
for automobiles can be brought down to a
greater extent.
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[7]Tire Pressure Monitoring System available at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tire_pressure_monito
ring_system
[8]Atmel semiconductors, AT91SAM9263
controller details, WWW.ATMEL.COM
[9]Zigbee Technology, www.zigbee.org.