Development of Embedded Web Server Configured on FPGA using Soft-core Processor and Web Client on PC
Raghuwar Sharan Soni1, Deepak Asati2
1Raghuwar Sharan Soni, Electronics & Communication Engineering, Gyan Ganga Institute of Technology & Sciences, Jabalpur, India.
2Deepak Asati, Electronics & Communication Engineering, Gyan Ganga Institute of Technology & Sciences, Jabalpur, India.
Manuscript received on May 17, 2012. | Revised Manuscript received on June 22, 2012. | Manuscript published on June 30, 2012. | PP: 295-298 | Volume-1 Issue-5, June 2012. | Retrieval Number: E0519061512/2012©BEIESP
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© The Authors. Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering and Sciences Publication (BEIESP). This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
Abstract: A soft processor is an Intellectual Property (IP) core that is implemented using the logic primitives of the FPGA. Key benefits of having a soft FPGA-based processing system are re programmability and re-configurability. There are various soft-core processors provided by different vendors such as Microblaze (Xilinx), NiosII (Altera), Open RISC (developed by Open Cores) etc. Microblaze processor is one of those soft-core processor developed by Xilinx which models specific processor using HDL and can be customized (and synthesized) for any application. The Microblaze soft processor is a soft 32-bit RISC processor. FPGA with soft core processor has wide variety of applications mainly in automobiles, medical field, entertainment electronics and industrial control system. In this project, a soft processor (Microblaze) based embedded system is developed with RS-232 serial interface, Ethernet interface, 32MB SDRAM, 4MB PROM (platform flash), 16×2 LCD interface, 8 digital inputs and 8 digital outputs. The embedded systems is connected to the internet and remotely controlled and monitored. The TCP/IP stack is ported on Microblaze and Embedded Webserver is developed on FPGA board using HTTP communication protocol. A Web browser based interface (client) is developed in VB.NET (with HTML and AJAX Controls) on Personal Computer (PC) to communicate with the FPGA board using HTTP through TCP/IP protocol. Ethernet connectivity is tested between Embedded Web server on Microblaze and Web client on PC. Messages sent from the client side can be displayed over LCD on Webserver. Client can send commands to board for controlling IO’s, for reading from RAM and for writing on RAM. Status check command sent by the client computer to Webserver updates the browser on PC to show status of IO’s. It can also be used as slave processor to provide Ethernet connectivity to any 8- bit, 16-bit and 32- bit processors. TFTP server is also deployed in the Embedded Webserver Card so as to provide file transfer access to/from the client (Computer / Other Processor)
Keywords: Embedded Webserver, Ethernet, FPGA, Intellectual Property (IP), Microblaze, Soft-core Processor and TFTP Server.