An open standard-based scheme for sensor and process level information for condition monitoring applications via internet

Automated Condition Monitoring (ACM) has become a necessity for modem day electromechanical systems. It is used not only to increase the efficiency of a system but also to avoid costly unscheduled breakdowns. Communication systems play a fundamental role in the implementation of ACM. At present, there are a number of different types of communication systems that are used for this purpose. Since its introduction, the popularity of Internet has been increasing at an extraordinary rate. It has found its way into all fields of life including ACM. The number of Internet based Condition Monitoring (e-CM) systems are increasing due to various advantages of Internet such as universal access, openness and easy implementation. However, the integration of Internet with various communication systems raises various issues. This includes identifying, parsing and processing of data from different communication system data formats. In addition, in distributed e-CM systems, sharing of data between different communication systems is a major issue. The already available solutions do not properly address these problems. These solutions are either proprietary or provide limited functionality. A scheme is proposed in this thesis that uses various open standards including Extensible Markup Language (XML) and Object Oriented Design (OOD) to convert the data from different communication systems into a single data format. The data format provides a common definition of sensor and process level information. This greatly facilitates the access of data from different communication systems via Internet. It also provides a way for communication systems to share data amongst themselves. Initially, an Object Oriented Model of the proposed data format in Unified Modelling Language (UML) is created. This provides an implementation free representation of the proposal. This model is then converted into an XML document model for the practical implementation of the scheme. The scheme is implemented in some of the most commonly available communication systems. A distributed system implementation of the scheme is also presented. The results demonstrate that by using this scheme, the integration of Internet with different communication systems and between different communication systems themselves will be more efficient and less complex. The thesis has made several contributions to knowledge including the layout of a typical e-CM strategy, an architecture to integrate Internet with different communication systems as well as to integrate different communication systems with each other, a standard data format for sensor information and UML and XML models for the proposed data format.