2009 IEEE Symposium on Industrial Electronics and Applications (ISIEA 2009), October 4-6, 2009, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Industrial Data Acquisition and Control System
using two PLCs’ Networked over MPI Network
Vijay Kumar Khatri, Ahsan Javed Ghangro, Jetandar Kumar and Syed Jaad Ul Haque
Industrial Electronics Engineering
Institute of Industrial Electronics Engineering, Pakistan Council of Scientific & Industrial Research
Karachi, Pakistan
Email: engnrvijay@gmail.com
Abstract— Prior to the development of data acquisition and
control system, collecting data from remote field devices,
distributed throughout the plant in large manufacturing
industries, was a quite challenging and complex task. The
development of industrial data acquisition and control
systems equipped these industries with facilities to gather
and process data, and perform control actions right from a
centralized location, i.e. control room, without actually
going to the plant. The introduction of programmable logic
controllers (PLC) as a data acquisition and control
hardware in these systems increased its reliability and
robustness. This paper highlights the design work carried
out to develop a cost effective, simple, robust and intelligent
industrial standard data acquisition and control system for
two physical field models (plants) that are 50 meters apart
from the control room. This work highlights process control
application and indeed is an application of industrial
electronics engineering. The work carried out for this data
acquisition and control system is in correlation with
SCADA, DCS and totally integrated automation, which is
meant to optimize processes and manufacturing
procedures at the same time.
Keywords—Automation; Data Acquisition; Control; DCS;
PID; PLC; SCADA
I. INTRODUCTION
Technological advancement in the field of electronics
engineering in recent years had lead to the development of
intelligent electronic devices and systems that have solved
number of problems the real industrial world was facing a
decade ago. The development of data acquisition and
control system is one of them. Industrial grade data
acquisition and control systems are basically designed to
offer remote monitoring and control over every single
field device distributed along a manufacturing facility
Data acquisition and control systems are rapidly gaining
popularity even in small manufacturing industries
primarily because its installation offers lower downtime,
integrated automation and process optimization and
secondly because of the modern day cost effective design
and integration techniques [1]. It is similar in function to
that of supervisory control and data acquisition system
(SCADA) and distributed control system (DCS) except
that the SCADA and DCS are more powerful and are
implemented at huge manufacturing facilities spread over
several kilometers [5].
The basic elements of a typical data acquisition system
are sensors and transducers, field wiring, signal
conditioning, data acquisition hardware and software, and
978-1-4244-4683-4/09/$25.00 ©2009 IEEE
personal computer. The choice of these basic elements
mostly depends on the application requirements. Among
the variety of data acquisition and control systems
available in the market, openness and expandability is
often neglected for small applications; but this particular
system is designed to offer both openness and
expandability. Since, this paper highlights the design
procedure and practical implementation for industrial data
acquisition and control system, thus this particular data
acquisition and control system consists of 04 major
elements; namely, physical field model, remote terminal
unit (RTU), communication network, and master terminal
unit (MTU) [1].
Physical field model houses sensors and transducers,
field wiring and signal conditioning. Remote terminal unit
houses data acquisition hardware and controlling device
and connectivity to physical field models. Communication
network provides a pathway for data communication
among physical field models and control room. Master
terminal unit is equipped with data acquisition software
application and a personal computer.
The selection of these basic elements is truly
application dependent. A variety of data acquisition cards
is available in the market that offers limited I/O handling
capacity within certain voltage/current, openness and
scalability limitations. These types of DAQ cards are
cheap and are designed to fulfill small and simple
application requirement like an alarm system etc. But one
needs to look for something else if an application
demands for hundred of I/O’s, strong networking features,
openness ad expandability. In this case, to facilitate the
market demands for specific applications, designers look
for the best solutions within available resources. This
paper basically focuses more on the development of a
solution for a specific application and the designed system
can also be generalized for any typical DAQ application.
Though, this paper highlights the design and installation
of a control system for industrial process thus it demands
a very accurate and robust controlling device. That in turn
increases the system cost.
Therefore the very first step in designing this system is
to select, from among the variety available, the main
components for the system. The number of physical field
models varies depending on the size of industry; whereas
the number of RTUs depends on the input/output (I/O)
points and control tasks to be carried out. The choice of
communication network is dependent on the data rate
requirements, distance among RTUs and control room,
and wired or wireless communication medium. The
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 2009 IEEE Symposium on Industrial Electronics and Applications (ISIEA 2009), October 4-6, 2009, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
choice of data acquisition software depends on the
integration of software application with rest of the system
elements, data archiving capability, alarm handling feature
and number of other factors [1].
This paper highlights design criteria and selection
procedure for major elements of an industrial data
acquisition and control system. The basic objective of this
design work is to offer remote monitoring, collection and
archiving of plant data and to carry out control task
remotely from control room. All communication tasks are
initiated from control room by supervisor, like operating a
plant or shutting it down. The block diagram of the system
is shown in Fig 1.
Figure 1. Block Diagram of the SCADA System
II. PHYSICAL FIELD MODELS
Physical field models are referred as plants to be
remotely monitored and controlled. As discussed earlier,
the type and number of physical field models depends on
the size and nature of the industry [5]. Thus in this
particular system design application, two physical field
model prototypes are designed and named as plant-ASM
and plant-EF. Each plant performs its own function
depending on the command received from MTU.
A. Plant-ASM
The acronym ASM stands for automatic sorting
machine. This plant prototype is designed in such a way
that it consists of a conveyer assembly, five 24 Volts DC
gear motors, four motorized sorters, four photoelectric
sensors, a weight sensor, and I/O interface cards. This
plant is a prototype designed to sort boxes on the basis of
weight and height, coming from a production line of a
continuous process. The presence of boxes on the belt
assembly is sensed by a photoelectric switch and a ready
signal is sent to control room to start the operation of the
sorting process. On the approval from the supervisor, an
enable signal from the control room starts the process [2].
At the start of the belt assembly, a motorized reverse-
forward sorter pushes the boxes from the production line
to the conveyer belt. As the box reaches the weighing
assembly on the belt, the conveyer stops and weighs the
object to make sure that it is not empty. The sensor for
weight detection is simply a pre-calibrated weight switch
that generates a high signal if the minimum calibrated
weight is sensed. Thus, after this decision, the box moves
forward and the box is sorted to bin-1 by the first sorter if
empty; otherwise it moves forward and passes through the
height measurement assembly. Three photoelectric
switches detect which height range, among the available
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three, the box falls into and it is sorted into corresponding
bin by the respective sorter.
The three height ranges are 0 to 2 inches, 2.1 to 4
inches, and 4.2 to 6 inches. The sensors for height
measurement are mounted on an adjustable assembly, thus
height ranges can be changed by adjusting the position of
photoelectric sensors on the belt assembly.
This plant is connected to RTU-1 through interface
cards and it has 6 digital inputs and 9 digital outputs. Fig 2
shows a picture of the ASM prototype.
Figure 2. Automatic Sorting Machine Prototype
B. Plant-EF
The acronym EF stands for Electric Furnace. This plant
model is designed in such a way that it consists of a
typical clay oven, two 1100 Watts electric heaters, a J-
type thermocouple, an isolation card and heater driver
card. This plant prototype is used as a furnace that aims to
maintain a user defined temperature in it. It accepts
temperature set point from MTU. This plant involves
feedback control [2].
The temperature range for this clay oven is from 25
degree Celsius to 450 degree Celsius. The control room
computer is equipped with the facility to set the
temperature for this clay oven. The operating temperature
for this clay oven is in between 200 to 450 degree Celsius;
thus the oven is preheated at 200 degree Celsius so that
the operating temperature can be achieved fast.
The heating source is two 1100 Watts electric resistive
heaters; while the sensing element is J-type thermocouple,
with iron-constantan composition, integrated with AD 594
monolithic cold junction compensation integrated circuit
to set the ice point reference for thermocouple cold
junction compensation [3].
A digital PID controller in the conjunction pulse
generator is implemented to generate a controlled PWN
output. The controlled PWN output controls power flow
to electrical heater through a MOSFET based solid state
relay. The chief objective for implementing a digital PID
controller is to minimize steady state error, and to achieve
fast and desired transient response. The respective
proportional, derivate and integral gains for digital PID
controller are determined using the auto tuning feature
available in Siemens PLC controllers. The results were
later verified using Matlab [3].
This plant is connected to RTU-2 through interface
cards and it has 3 digital inputs, 1 analog input, 1 analog
output and 2 digital outputs. Fig 3 shows the prototype
design for clay oven assembly with electrical heaters,
 2009 IEEE Symposium on Industrial Electronics and Applications (ISIEA 2009), October 4-6, 2009, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
sensor mounting, signal conditioning and electric heater
driving circuitry.
Figure 3. Clay Oven Prototype
III. REMOTE TERMINAL UNIT
The Remote Terminal Unit is one of the major
components of this system and is referred to as the data
acquisition and control device. RTU gathers data from
remote field devices, transfers it to the control room i.e.
MTU and perform necessary control actions dictated by
the supervisor [1]. After studying the controller
requirements for physical field models for this particular
system, this section describes the remote terminal units
used in the data acquisition and control system.
To ensure the use of available resources, this system
uses two programmable logic controllers (PLC) as RTUs.
Each plant is connected to an individual PLC, and both
PLCs are routed on a common network in order to
communicate with MTU. Each controller on the network
can communicate with control room computer.
Programmable logic controller is a powerful industrial
computer device that can perform complex control tasks,
both discrete and analog; depending on the how it is
programmed. PLC also offers powerful networking
features that make it more useful in industries to perform
integrated automation operations [3].
The PLC used for this SCADA system is S 7-300
Series by Siemens, with additional signal modules, both
analog and digital. The programming software for this
controller is SIMATIC STEP 7. Fig 4 shows the
functional block diagram of a RTU, and depicts the way
in which it is connected to the MTU and the plant [1].
Updating
1. Transferring
Status of data to MTU
Plant
2. Executing
P User Program
L T
A 3. Accepting
Decision from
N MTU and
Reading
T Status of Updating
Plant Outputs
Figure 4. Functional Block Diagram of RTU showing connections
to plant and MTU
IV. COMMUNICATION RESOURCE
The communication resource provides pathway for data
communication among MTU and RTUs. The pathway can
be wired or wireless depending on the type of RTU used,
data transmission rate and the distance among MTU and
RTUs. The communication link to the MTU must provide
two-way communication, and should be a multipoint link
in order to gather data from various RTUs spread over a
manufacturing facility. A master unit (MTU) always
initiates the communication, which is why this system can
be referred as the supervisory control system.
In this data acquisition and control system, the selection
of communication equipment was dependent on the
factors, such as a data transmission rate of 187.5 Kbps,
multiple device connectivity over RS-485 protocol, and
guaranteed data transfer over a distance of 50 meters
among networked devices. Thus, after studying the
available resources, multipoint interface network is
selected as the communication resource to transfer data
back and forth [7].
Using MPI network a maximum of 32 devices can be
interconnected; each device on the network is referred to
as node and is identified with a unique MPI address. Thus,
in this system there are in total three nodes, i.e. Data
acquisition computer, RTU-1, and RTU-2, assigned MPI
addresses 0, 2 and 3 respectively [7].
To setup a multipoint interface network, one needs
PROFIBUS cable, PG/PC socket, RS-485 plug, bus
termination resistors and MPI/PC adapter [8]. The MPI
network for the SCADA system is routed in the way
shown in the fig 5.
Figure 5. Connection Diagram for RTUs
V. MASTER TERMINAL UNIT
Master terminal unit is aimed to offer real time remote
monitoring and control capability over all the remote
terminal units installed in this system. All data acquisition
and control tasks are initiated and supervised by a
qualified person at MTU, commonly named as
“supervisor”. For reliable operation, a MTU station should
have a human machine interface (HMI) and data
M
acquisition software application [1].
U
The selection of the HMI and data acquisition software
is mainly dependent on the number and type of RTU
being used, distance among plants and MTU station,
communication pathway (wired or wireless) and data
archiving and logging capability. After studying the
available resources, this system uses Siemens SIMATIC
Windows Control Center (WinCC) V 6.0 as the HMI and
data acquisition software, installed on a personal
computer.
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 2009 IEEE Symposium on Industrial Electronics and Applications (ISIEA 2009), October 4-6, 2009, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Thus the MTU is equipped with a PC and a SIMATIC
WinCC software application. SIMATIC WinCC is PC
based operator control and monitoring software for plant
visualization, that offers powerful remote monitoring and
control functionality under Windows for all branches of
industry ranging from single-user to distributed multi-user
systems.
The data acquisition and control software application is
developed using the WinCC V 6.0, and the PC is
equipped with a runtime application for the designed
system. This runtime application has five process screens;
two screens show the HMI for each plant, two screens
show the alarm window, while the fifth one shows the
trend and data archiving feature available. This software
application is equipped to archive the plant’s data for a
maximum of 15days, and is also equipped with a plant
data report generation feature in PDF format [8].
Fig 6 shows the HMI for plant-EF, while the Fig 7
shows the HMI for plant-ASM.
Fig 6. Human Machine Interface for Plant-EF
Fig 7. Human Machine Interface for Plant-ASM
VI. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION
A. Results
The successful design and implementation of the
industrial data acquisition and control system highlights
all the important functions that a practical industrial
standard system should have. The designed system is an
application of industrial electronics engineering. The
practical results and expected results for plant-EF have
little deviations and that is because of environmental
disturbances; also the system is quite energy consuming.
But the plant can be made more energy efficient by using
cheap heating source such as natural gas heaters etc; the
selection in turn will change the control methodology.
This plant has a limited temperature measurement range,
i.e. 425 degree Celsius only, which can be increased by
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redesigning clay oven for desired heating requirements.
Also, the number of RTUs can be increased up to 32 for
the same design, thus it is a future recommendation.
The industrial data acquisition and control system can
be implemented at an industry and it can also be used as a
training kit for instrumentation and control technicians to
give them a general idea of how an industrial data
acquisition and control system works.
B. Conclusion
The authors have successfully designed the cost
effective industrial application data acquisition and
control system using available resources. The experience
of working on the data acquisition and control system was
great. The practical work has gone a long way in helping
them understand and develop an insight into the designing
of industrial based automation systems. The power of
WinCC (HMI tool) and STEP 7 (Programming Software)
becomes more evident as the designing process would not
have been possible without these tools.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors of this paper greatly acknowledge the
valuable support from Engineer Dr. Syed Naimat Ali
Rizvi (IIEE) and Engineer Riaz Un-Nabi Jaffri (NED
University). Nida Ansari, Executive Engineer at Siemens
Pakistan deserves special thanks for her valuable support
in helping the authors with software issues.
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