Proceeding of the 2009 International Conference on Space Science and Communication

26-27 October 2009, Port Dickson, Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia

EMBEDDED ETHERNET MICROCONTROLLER

FOR OPTICAL MONITORING
Mohamad Syuhaimi Ab-Rahman, Mohamad Najib Mohamad Saupe, Aswir Premadi, Kasmiran Jumari
Spectrum Technology Division, Computer and Network Security Group,
Department of Electrical, Electronic, and System Engineering,
Faculty of Engineering and Built Environment, Universiti kebangsaan Malaysia,
43600 UKM Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia
syuhaimi@vlsi.eng.ukm.my, najibsaupe@gmail.com, aswirp@vlsi.eng.ukm.my, kbj@vlsi.ukm.my

Abstract—In this paper, we presented the embedded Ethernet
microcontroller for optical monitoring. This design is used for
fiber monitoring in the FTTH system. The embedded Ethernet
microcontroller is used to control the 1x8 optical switches where
this switch is to reroute the optical signal in the FTTH system.
These systems consisting of two primaries part communicating
each other: i)A server consisting of a microcontroller
PIC18F97J60 with built-in embedded Ethernet controller module
and ii) a client computer. In this system, a microcontroller system
is act like web server that store the web pages in their memory, a
client computer can access this web page using web browser to
monitor and control the microcontroller where the
microcontroller is used to control the path of the optical signal by
using optical switch.
Keywords-microcontroller for optical switching, ethernet
microcontroller, optical switching.
I. INTRODUCTION
Today, quite often a remote monitoring is necessary in
FTTH system. This application is used to control the
monitoring device at the faraway location. The engineer at the
Central office is capable to control the device without going to
the site location. The conventional way to control the device
and client computer is by using serial port. This connection is
limited only to the fixed length.
Internet is the biggest place where the information and data
swap over. The internet network has been increasing from day
to day, and it already installed in many office and industrial
buildings. It is the big network that has great advantages for
the remote monitoring and controlling. As internets are being
more and more easily accessible to anyone nearly everywhere
in the world today, it has become a preference in embedded
microcontroller for remote monitoring and controlling. The
combining of an Ethernet controller with the microcontroller
has become the hottest choice for the intelligent system today.
Now, every device has microcontroller as a heart in their
system. This is because microcontroller is a low–cost
embedded system where used by application that require
computing power delivered within a small form factor to
control and monitor the consumer appliance, mobile robots,
machinery, appliances, etc.
Formerly, microcontroller has a limited connectivity option
for data communication between personal computer (PC) and
microcontroller. These two devices usually are connected by
using serial port interface. This type of interfaces it’s has some
weakness where it’s only permitted only one user to control
the microcontroller and the user need to be in close proximity
with the microcontroller. Enabling a microcontroller to
communicated with personal computer (PC) by other interface
e.g. Ethernet network, will give the developer and end-user an
ability to monitor and control the microcontroller operating
device with greater flexibility [1].
Today, Microchip Inc, ones of the microcontroller
manufacturers have developed a single chip microcontroller
integrated with built-in Ethernet controller [2]. This
improvement will make microcontroller easily to be connected
with PC through Ethernet network. Until today, Ethernet is the
most widely deployed network and are scalable from the
simplest to most complex network up to 248 network mode,
that why Ethernet is compelling for embedded application
because it will enabling a microcontroller to communicate to a
ubiquitous data communication network. The Ethernet
technology is based on standard IEEE 802.3 that ensure
reliability of network connection and data transmission and this
will ensure interoperability. Once the system connected to a
network, it can be monitor and controlled through internet.
While the Ethernet maximum cable length is 100meter,
communication over internet removes any previous distance
barrier [3].
In this paper, we want to propose an embedded Ethernet
microcontroller for optical monitoring. This design is used to
control the optical path in the optical network for monitoring
system. In FTTH network where optical fiber is used as
medium for data transmission, the optical fiber forms an optical
waveguide for optical signal. Optical switch is used in this
system if there has a requirement to switch the optical signal
from a first optical waveguide to a second optical waveguide.
In other word, optical switch is a switch that enables optical
signal in optical fiber or integrated optical circuit to be
selectively switched from one circuit to another. In optical
communication, any connection or aligning for the first group
of optical fiber with any one of a second group of optical fiber
can be made by using the optical switch to enabling an optical
signal to propagate through optical interface junction from one

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 Figure 1. Proposed system
fiber to the other. There is a lot of telecommunication
application that utilizes the optical switching such as networks
protection, network restoration, equipment and device
redundancy, and performance monitoring.
This paper will demonstrate the embedded Ethernet
controller to control the optical switch for optical monitoring
system. The microcontroller with internet connectivity is used
to control the optical switch over internet network to control
optical path. This design will have a great advantage for the
optical communication application such as network protection
and network restoration in the FTTH system. It will give a user
to control the switching between line and to control the
switching time between the lines. In our design here, the
PIC18F97J60 microcontroller system will act like a server and
host the web page for optical switch controlling application.
This web page can be accessed by user to control the optical
path through the internet network. This system can control the
switching application either in manual mode or automatic
mode. The system proposed is shown in the figure 1.
A. Microcontroller
PIC18F97J60 is the latest microcontroller manufacture by
Microchip. It is a microcontroller with built in Ethernet
module. The design of PIC18F97J60 has meet all of
specification require by IEEE 802.3 and completely compatible
with 10/100/1000 Base-T network. These microcontrollers
need 2.35V to 3.3V direct current to operate. It has 3808Kbyte
static RAM, and 128Kbyte flash program memory, plus
capable to address of up to 2Mbyte by using external memory
bus. PIC18F97J60 is a 100 pin TQFP device with 70 general
purposes inputs outputs ports and the unique about this
microcontroller is because of its built-in Ethernet controller
module.
In order to connect to the internet, a web server requires
four main part of the hardware: the media access controller
(MAC), network physical interface device (PHY), isolating
magnetic and physical jack that connect to the network system.
This microcontroller comes with the full implementations of
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both Media Access Control (MAC) and Physical Layer
transceiver (PHY) module. The five major functional block of
this Ethernet module consists:
1. The PHY transceiver module that encode and decode
the analog data that is present on the twisted pair
interface and send or receive it over the network.
2. The MAC module that implement IEEE 802.3
compliant MAC logic and provide Media Independent
Interface Management (MIIM) to control the PHY.
3. An independent, 8-Kbyte RAM buffer for storing
packet that has been received packets that are to be
transmitted.
4. An arbiter to control access to the RAM buffer for
storing packet that has been receives and packet that is
to be transmitted.
5. The register interfaces that function as an interpreter
of command and internal status signal between the
module and the microcontroller’s SFRs.
The PHY module provides separate output to drive the
standard Ethernet indicator, LEDA which multiplexed with
PORTA pin RA0 and LEDB multiplexed with RA1. See
[2] for more detail on the PIC18F97J60 hardware feature.
B. Optical switch
The optical switch used in this design is P1S18B-LDD
manufacture by Omron’s [4]. This is a mechanical optical
switch designed to switch an optical route of 1x8. An optical
route is switched when an electromagnetic actuator move the
prism according to an externally generated and applied input
control signal. This P1S18B-LDD model is optically passive,
operating independently of data rate, data format, and optical
signal direction.
This optical switch contains an electronic interface board
that converts TTL input signal to the switch’s optical channel
position. Three channel input terminals (D0, D1, D2) is uses as
channel switch and one strobe input terminal. When power is
apply to this optical switch, the high level need
n to supplied to microcontroller system designn here will act as a HTTP web
strobe input terminal at the same time, if not, the switch doesn’t server module. When the pow wer is supply to the board, the
work properly. In the table 1 below show the optical switch LCD will display the status annd the IP address of the board.
configuration for the optical switch. The chaannel address input We can access the HTML weeb pages store in the embedded
(D0, D1, D2) need to set to the appropriatee value if want to Ethernet system by inserting the IP address that has been
choose a specific channel. See [4] for more detail on P1S18B- assign to this board using web browser on Personal Computer,
LDD. laptop or PDA as long as it connnected to the internet.
TABLE I. Optical switch configurration
CHANNEL INPUT TERMIINAL
D0 D1 D2
1 0 0 0
2 0 0 1
3 0 1 0
4 0 1 1
5 1 0 0
6 1 0 1
7 1 1 0
8 1 1 1

C. Embedded Ethernet system

The initial designs of this system, especiallly with the regard
to the hardware, based on the microchipp PICDEM.net 2
Development board. This board used use u PIC18F97J60
microcontroller with bidirectional Ethernnet and USART
connectivity. In figure 3 show the developm ment board that has
been design to use with 1x8 optical switchess. LCD module on
this board is used to display the status of o the board. Any
additional data and web page are store in thhe 256Kbyte serial
EEPROM, this board is connected to internnet through RJ-45
port and DB9 socket is use for serial RS-2332 communication
with the PC.
This board required 9 - 12volt directt currents (VDC)
regulated power supply to operate. Four pin from input/output
port on microcontroller is connected to thhe optical switch,
three pin is used as data control for the opticcal switch and one
pin is used for the strobe pin. The em mbedded Ethernet
Figure 2. Web paage store in board memory
Figure 2 above show thhe web pages store in the
microcontroller system mem mory. User can control the
operation of the optical switchh by using these web pages to
send the instruction to the boarrd. Once the instruction from the
web pages is received, the micrrocontroller will run the specific
algorithm to control the opticaal switch. The switching of the
optical switch can be control either
e by manual or auto mode.
In manual switching, user can determine
d which line or channel
to route the optical signal and for auto mode, the user need to
select the switching time between the channel and
microcontroller will automaticcally switching the channel by
ascending sequence from chaannel 1 to channel 8. For this
board we have specified thee switching time between the
channels either 10second, 30 seecond or 60 second.

Figure 3. Experiment boards

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II. SOFTWARE
In this design, software environment are divide into two
parts, the first part is C programming language. These language
is use to design the microcontroller algorithm to control the
optical switch. C language has become popular choice for
microcontroller programming compare to assembly language.
This is because C language is more systematic and easy to
arrange compare to assembly language. The second part is the
web programming language, it consist of the HTML, AJAX
and CSS language. This web programming language is used to
design the GUI for the optical switch application. The
communication between the board and the PC client in the
network is accomplished by using Transmission Control
Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP).
A. Ethernet Communication
This design used TCP/IP as a communication protocol
between the board and the PC client in the network. TCP/IP is
a widely used communication protocol for internet. It allows
Total location independence and interoperability to any
embedded application. In our design for Ethernet
communication is based on Microchip TCP/IP stack
application for communication between the physical network
port and application we want to use. This board application is
configured as the web server or HTTP server stores the web
pages content in local memory where it capable to serving
HTML page to web browser through the network. By this
application, we can use this board for status monitoring, remote
management, and data retrieval application.
B. Web bases application
The web page is used as a GUI which runs on remote client
computer to communicate between the user and the board. It
allows the web server module to accept data from user through
a network. This data can be used to control system memory or
Client PC
Ethernet Board
Web browser
Optical Input Signal
Figure 4. Experiment configuration
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output. When the client inserts the address of the board, the
web page will be appear. These web pages will send the HTTP
request to the board using GET or POST request method. The
GET method is a simplest method where all data is in memory
at once and it automatically decodes compare to POST method.
III. EXPERIMENTAL SETUP
We have already test the capability of our system to
control the optical switch by internet network through
extensive experiment. This experiment is done by connecting
the optical switch with the embedded ethernet board. The
input of the optical switch is connected to the optical source
and the eight line of the optical switch output is connected to
the power meter FOT-600 to measure the insertion lost and
compare the result with the datasheet specification. FOT-600
[6] is a Optical Loss Test Set used to measure the loss in the
optical network. For the single unit of this device, it can
generate the optical laser in several wavelengths for testing
purpose and has one power meter for measure the loss. In this
experiment, we test the switching in the manual mode
operation and the switching of the optical switch is control
over internet.
When the power is supply to the board, the optical switch
at default condition will be at channel 1. This because the zero
logic at the address input (T1, T2, and T3) is assign to the
channel 1. In figure 5 shows the insertion loss measure at the
channel 1 and in figure 6 shows the insertion loss measure at
channel 4. For this test, we used 1550 nm wavelength as a
source for optical signal and we use 2 unit FOT-600 for the
testing, where for the first unit is to generate the optical source
and measure the loss in the channel 1 and the second unit is to
measure the loss in the other channel. In figure 4 below show
the experimental setup for the switching testing.
Connect to Internet
FOT-600
Optical Output Signal
 Figure 5. FOT-600 measure loss at terminal 1

Figure 6. FOT-600 measure loss at terminal 4.

IV. RESULT AND DISCUSSION of the Ethernet communication in the embedded system has
improved remote monitoring, control, diagnostics, and data
To validate the system, we performed some evaluation by
collection application to the next level. The proposed Internet
measuring the insertion lost and compare the result with the
datasheet specification. From the optical switch datasheet Based Embedded system here is a complete hardware and
specification, the insertion loss is state at 2.0dB; this value is software for switching application. This intelligent unit is
measured without the connector. The results obtained are perfectly suited for optical switching where it plays a major
summarized in table 2. process in the optical networking.
REFERENCES
TABLE II. Insertion loss measurement
[1] Imran Ahmed, Hong Wong, and Vikram Kapila, “ Internet-Based
Optical Insertion Loss Remote Control using a Microcontroller and an Embedded Ethernet”
channel From datasheet Experimental result Proceeding of the 2004 American Control Conference
Channel 1 2dB 2.51dB [2] PIC18F97J60 Family Data Sheet, Microchip Technology Inc., 2008,
Doc. no. DS39762D.
Channel 2 2dB 4.26dB [3] The microchip webseminar website, [Online]. Available:
Channel 3 2dB 3.53dB http://techtrain.microchip.com/webseminars
[4] The Omron electronic Component website,2008 [Online]. Available:
Channel 4 2dB 3.88dB http://www.components.omron.eu/
Channel 5 2dB 3.54dB [5] Hong Wong and Vikram Kapila, “ Internet-Based Remote Control of a
DC Motor using an Embedded Microcontroller,” Proceeding of the 2004
Channel 6 2dB 3.73dB
American Society for Engineering Education annual Conference
Channel 7 2dB 3.09dB &Exposition
Channel 8 2dB 3.25dB [6] EXFO. 2006. FTB-400 Universal Test System User Guide. EXFO
Electro-Optical Engineering Inc, Canada.

V. CONCLUSION
Today, embedded system with Ethernet connectivity has
become popular choice for the system design. The advantage

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