A solution for remote-upgrading field controllers based on FPGA Cyclone 2C35

摘要

Modern telescopes usually have more controlled nodes than classical ones. Those nodes are separately distributed at various locations of the instrument and not easy to access. While in adjustment, it always requires to modify the control software, or sometimes to reform the hardware structure and to upgrade the related programs. To solve the problems of renewing the field controllers, we introduce a FPGA based telescope controller system and a scheme for remote-upgrading it via Ethernet. This paper mainly describes the structure of the field controller, the requirements for remote-upgrading and system structure. Also discussed are the protocol applications and extensions, the processing methods as well as the ideal of software design. The scheme has been in trial run for a large telescope with 16 field controller's subsystem and excellent results were obtained. It may effectively solve the remote-upgrading problems for multiple field controllers of large telescopes. Besides the scheme can be used in other multi-nodes industrial control systems too, which is of high value in applications.