CloudBus Protocol Hardware Multi-Converter Gateway for Distributed Embedded Systems

K. Krzywicki, A. Barkalov, G. Andrzejewski, L. Titarenko, M. Kolopienczyk (Univ. Zielona Gora, Poland)

The CloudBus protocol is one of the methods which is used for data exchange and concurrent process synchronization in the distributed embedded systems. It realizes decentralized (distributed) control method, where each node is equal to each other. This communication model allows the significant savings in the amount of transmitted data between end modules. However, there are many distributed embedded systems, which are already implemented and working in the field. Switching the entire communication interface to the another protocol would result in high costs and process control interruption. This paper proposes a hardware converter which provides the integration of the CloudBus protocol with most popular protocols used in the industry. It allows for the extension and connection of the existing systems with the distributed embedded systems based on the CloudBus protocol. The research results provide performance and resource usage analysis for different converter architectures. The verification was performed on the SoC research and development platform for distributed embedded systems, which is based on Xilinx Zynq-7000.