Development of an Information Exchange System from Remote Instruments

Abstract

Unattended instruments in remote locations need to exchange information—analog, digital or video—to a distantly located computer or monitoring station. In such instruments, the hardware has to be simple and minimal. In this paper, the principles which concern such information transfer is described. The methods of image compression using DCT (Discrete Cosine Transform) technique as well as the facilities of multi-tasking or parallel processing with a microcontroller are exploited in order to increase throughput. The problem of timing compatibility in relation to the data collection, compression and transmission is also described.

Indexing terms:

• Remote instrument
• Image transmission
• Information exchange system
• Image compression