Designing Control System Software for Radio Telescopes S

Designing Control System Software for Radio Telescopes S. Chaudhuri, A. Ahuja, S. Natrajan, and H. M. Vin Presenter: Harrick M. Vin Vice President and Chief Scientist Tata Research Development and Design Centre, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS)

Two Interesting Projects Control System Software for Scientific Apparatus Design of command-control environment for complex, scientific apparatus Collect and analyze data streams from a large network of sensors Control apparatus operations through actuators International Thermo-nuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) [In collaboration with IPR, Ahmedabad] GMRT Radio Telescope [In collaboration with NCRA, Pune] TCS CONFIDENTIAL November 2008 2

Requirements and Opportunities Solution requirements • Agility – Rapid development of software control system • Configurability – Ease of building custom enhancements • Evolvability – Evolve systems to accommodate new technologies Broader requirement • Reusability – Reuse the framework across different apparatus Common practice • One-off custom-built software control systems • Design and implementation takes too long • Too much custom coding Not very configurable • Significant changes required to accommodate changes • Definitely not reusable TCS CONFIDENTIAL November 2008 3

Vision and Approach Vision • Reusable, evolvable and configurable control software framework • Specification-driven architecture Automate code generation • Dramatically reduce effort and cost Key questions • What are the “common” abstractions? • Is there a generic architecture for control system software? Approach • Model scientific apparatus as a network of sensors and actuators • Develop a flexible architecture for control element • Capture interactions with sensors and actuators • Model complete system as a composition of control elements TCS CONFIDENTIAL November 2008 4

SACE Architecture Sensor-Actuator Control Element (SACE) Subsystem Self Description SACE Configuration Data Streaming Data & Event Distribution Event Notification Command Reception Data Processing Event Processing Command Processing Data Acquisition Event Reception Command Distribution TCS CONFIDENTIAL Validation Rules Command Translation FSM, Script, Rules November 2008 5

SACE @ GMRT Software Control System @ GMRT Using SACE TCS CONFIDENTIAL November 2008 6

SACE Architecture Sensor-Actuator Control Element (SACE) SACE Configuration Data Streaming Data & Event Distribution Subsystem Self Description Real-time visualization Event Notification Command Reception Data Processing Event Processing Command Processing Data Acquisition Event Reception Command Distribution TCS CONFIDENTIAL Validation Rules Command Translation FSM, Script, Rules November 2008 7

SACE Implementation SACE Prototype Implementation • Philosophy: Leverage third-party components as much as possible • Technology choices: – Basic platform: Java – System specification format: XML – Command validation and translation: • Unimode FSM Framework • Open. Rules rules engine – – – Interpreter for configuration and control scripts: Mozilla Rhino Data stream processing: HSQLDB, Hibernate (in-memory DB) Communication: TCP/IP sockets Driver integration: Java Native Interface (JNI) Auto-generation of UI: Swing Data stream visualization: JFree. Chart TCS CONFIDENTIAL November 2008 8

SACE @ GMRT SACE Experience @ GMRT Existing control system software: ~15, 000 lines of code • ABCCom – running at individual GMRT antennas • Teleset – running at Central Building SACE-based control system software • Reuse about 50% of code of ABCCom (~3, 000 lines of code) • Drivers for interaction with hardware devices • Replace the rest of ABCCom and Teleset with SACE-geenrated code ! Benefits • Flexibility, Evolvability and Configurability • Reuse TCS CONFIDENTIAL November 2008 9

For more information, contact: Harrick Vin (harrick. vin@tcs. com)

SACE @ GMRT IF Subsystem: Self Description TCS CONFIDENTIAL November 2008 11

SACE @ GMRT Data Validation Using Rules TCS CONFIDENTIAL November 2008 12

SACE @ GMRT IF Command Validation and Translation TCS CONFIDENTIAL November 2008 13

SACE @ GMRT Control Script for IF Subsystem TCS CONFIDENTIAL November 2008 14

SACE @ GMRT SACE-generated UI and Data Stream Visualization TCS CONFIDENTIAL November 2008 15

For more information, contact: Harrick Vin (harrick. vin@tcs. com)