DISTRIBUTED INTELLIGENCE ENGINEERING CASUALTY AND DAMAGE CONTROL MANAGEMENT SYSTEM USING AN AC POWER LINE CARRIER-CURRENT LAN

摘要

A distributed artificial intelligence data acquisition and equipment control system forms a local area network (LAN) over the AC power lines (83) of a vessel for communicating shipboard engineering casualty and damage control information. Each node (10E, 12E, etc.) in the LAN includes a power line carrier current (PLCC) transceiver, a slave processing unit (22) for interfacing with local sensors or equipment, and a master processing unit (28) for controlling the formation, transmission and reception of OQPSK LAN messages. Nodes in the LAN are strategically positioned at various locations throughout the ship and are configured to function either as a Terminal Unit or as a Data and Control Unit. Terminal Units are equipped with a touch screen display (124) and an intelligent controller (128) that provides a user-friendly interactive operator interface through a series of display screen prompts and includes a data base of ship casualty and damage control information stored in a local non-volatile random access memory.