Abstract —One embedded system for military or industry
personal data assistant (PDA) is designed in the paper. The
hardware and software aimed at military and industry
applications are working in harsh conditions. On the demand
of soldiers or workers in field, the PDA components include
CPU, memory, LCD touch screen, wireless communication
module, GPS, barcode laser scanner and interfaces etc. are
integrated. The features of PDA have a wide working
temperature range (-40 c~80 c), water-proof, impactresistance, small size, portable and low powoer consumption
design. The trial production shows the PDA is suitable for the
applications of soldiers or workers in the harsh environment.
Keywords-personal data assistant; PXA270;WinCE; military
application; industry application
I. I NTRODUCTION
Today the war is information warfare. There are manyinformatization requirments in battlefeild. Many novel
portable electronic devices can be equippted for soldiers tohandle and transmit information such as GPS information[1-2], weather forecasting[3], command[4] or other military
application information[5-6]. Likely, the industry doman hasthe same requirments.With the development of embedded technology, a few
embedded system schemes can be selected as military orindustry PDA. Handheld devices usually adopt battery as
power. So the low power consumption is an important designrule. In addition, the PDA need to do much computationwhen processing image or video task. In [7], the XScale 32
bits processor PXA270, transplanted the embedded Linuxand Qt/Embedded as embedded graphic library, carryed outmotion target detection and tracking system by adopting mapmeans capture data from camera. Experiments result showsthis system has a preferably capability. [8] designed anembedded gateway for wireless sensor networks based on
PXA270 processor. [9] researched one real-timeimplementation of continuous speech recognition algorithmon a mobile CPU, Intel PXA270, platform. [10] proposed thehydrological sediment detection system based on imagecollection subsystem, network transmission subsystem andARM-based processing subsystem based on PXA270
processor. The similar application was applied in [11].[12] implemented the H.264/AVC baseline profile decoderon Intel's Xscale processor PXA270 for real-timeapplications, which requires higher-speed processor.
From the above applications we can see that the PXA270 processor has been widly used in portbale device, which provides sophisticated power management capabilitiesenabling excellent performance.
II. THE HARDWARE STRUCTURE
A. Military or industry requirements of PDA
The working environment of PDA is very hardness. For
example, the weather maybe cold or hot with a -40c~50 c
temperature range when people use PDA for gettinginformation or reporting personal information. When march
in a rainy day, the equipments of people shall be shower wet.Sometimes, swimming across rivers to accomplish task isneeded.
So there are many technical targets must be consideredinto design the device.
Working temperature is -40c~80 c .
Water-proof.
Impact resistance.
Wireless communication.
Global position system.
Portable design.
Low power consumption.In order to achieve high reliability and performance, all
the components include CPU, Li-ion battery, LCD screen,chips, resistors, capacitors and other elements used in thedevice can undergo a rigorous trial or examination.
B. Hardware platform of the PDA
The platform includes one CPU, CPLD, FLASH,SDRAM, LCD controler, wireless communication module,Ethernet, SD card and USB port, one simple key-board, Li-ion battery and the power transformer parts.
1) Microprocessor.The microprocessor is the core cell of PDA, which
decides the whole performance such as CPU speed, mainfunctions and power consumption etc. As one military PDA,the low power and high performance is important design
work.The Intel PXA270 processor is an integrated system-on-a-chip (SOC) microprocessor for high performance, dynamic,low-power portable handheld and hand-set devices as well asembedded platforms. It incorporates the Intel Xscaletechnology which complies with the ARM version 5TEinstruction set (excluding floating-point instructions) andfollows the ARM programmer’s model. The PXA270
processor also provides Intel Wireless MMX™ mediaenhancement technology, which supports integer instructionsto accelerate audio and video processing. In addition, itincorporates Wireless Intel Speedstep Technology, which
provides sophisticated power management capabilitiesenabling excellent MIPs/mW performance. The PXA270
processor provides a scalable, bi-directional data interface toa cellular baseband processor, supporting seven logicalchannels and other features. The operating-system timer channels and synchronous serial ports also accept an externalnetwork clock input so that they can be synchronized to thecellular network. The processor also provides a universalsubscriber identity module card interface.
The PXA270 processor memory interface givesflexibility as it supports a variety of external memory types.The processor also provides four 64 KB banks of on-chipSRAM, which can be used for program code or multimediadata. Each bank can be configured independently to retain itscontents when the processor enters a low-power mode. Anintegrated LCD panel controller supports displays up to 800
by 600 pixels, permitting 1-, 2-, 4-, and 8-bit gray scale and1-, 2-, 4-, 8-, 16-, 18-, and 24-bit color pixels. A 256-byte
palette RAM provides flexible color mapping. A set of serialdevices and general-system resources offers computationaland connectivity capability for a variety of applications.
The PXA270 processor is one excellent choice to designthe hardware platform of PDA [13].
2) Peripheral interface management.In order to reduce the load of CPU, the peripheral
interface management can be handled by one CPLD orFPGA programmable controller. Compared with generalCPU, CPLD or FPGA is more flexible and true real-time ormultithread. For the PDA, greater storage capacity requirements
become very important. The Intel PXA270 processor is very popular and is used in many PDAs. In order tosupport the higher storage capacity associated with
hard-disk drives (HDD), the Intel PXA270 processor can be connected to a HDD via the The VariableLatency I/O (VLIO) Memory Interface.
The VLIO interface solution only requires a smallnumber of additional components and produces low-cost and efficient Direct Memory Access (DMA)
performance. The Xilinx CoolRunner-IITM CPLD is anideal solution to bridge the Intel processor to a HDDwithout the need of other components. With theintroduction of the XC2C64A or XC2C128 CPLDs,the Xilinx CoolRunner-II Family becomes the idealsolution to address the need of the level shifting forthis application.
Fig.1 shows a block diagram of a CompactFlash
connection to the PXA270 processor VLIO interfacein true IDE PIO mode. This diagram describes themapping of the CompactFlash true IDE signals to thePXA270 processor.
In addition, the interface-controller logic function forethernet, USB, Keyboard, and SPI bus can beembedded in the XC2C128 CPLD.
3) Function modules design. LCD touch screen. In order to improve the operation
efficiency and display information, one 3.5-inch touchscreen is adopted in the PDA.
USB port. The PDA provides mini USB port toconnect high speed memory device or battery charger.
Figure 1. True IDE PIO bolck diagram.
Laser Scanner. The MDL 2000 is a cost-effective wayto add high performance scanning of linear barcodesinside an OEM unit. This space-saving, easy-to-installmodule delivers an accurate aiming line and 100 scans
per second and integrates perfectly when mounted ineither mobile or stationary applications. The MDL2000 also offers a wide variety of configurable optionswhich may be set using serial commands. Its featuresare bi-directional scanning, classification I laser,minimal power consumption, configurable parameters,small (<2cm) and light-weight(<10grams). The MDL2000 is easy to integrated into tight spaces, so it is anidea for a mobile device such as PDA.
The MDL 2000 decodes the barcode and sends itsinformation to PXA270 MPU by a standard UART
port.
Figure 2. MDL 2000 barcode laser scanner.
Ethernet. The PDA can connect to internet by onedemountable module, which based on 10/100Mbpsnon-PCI single chip ethernet controller-LAN91C111.
SD Card/MMC interface. In order to storage massivedata, one 2GB SD card can be connected to exchangedata.
GPS. The position information is important to soldiersor workers when march in field. So there is a GPSmodule mounted in the PDA device to providenavigation information. The PXA270 gets the GPSinformation by one RS232 port.
Wireless communication. The PDA provides anoptional module such as GPRS, WLAN or Zigbeewireless module. The communication based onWLAN or Zigbee is free, but the GPRS is chargingand depends on cellular station. The short messagescan be send by wireless communication and display onthe LCD screen, so the information can be shared ifthe soldiers or workers use the PDA mounted awireless communication module.
The PCB is designed into one 8-layer board so that theelectronic components can be distributed more closer andminimize the PDA size. All the components are industrialgrade or are according to military standard. The socketconnectors are almost thin-shrink small outline package.
The main performance parameters of this PDA are:
Operating temperature is -40c~80 c . 520MHz Processor. 64MB SDRAM, 32MB Flash. 3.5 inch colour touch screen. Integrated Secure Digital(SD) card. Integrated GPS, laser scanner. Integrated small keyboard. 3000mAh Li-ion battery.
Figure 4. The circuit board picture of PDA.
III. THE SOFTWARE OF PDA
The software includes the VHDL design of CPLD andEVC program based on WinCE 5.0.
In the PDA embedded platform, the CPLD controller actsas an important function of peripheral interface management.The VHDL function modules mainly include five blocks:
Select the devices-The PXA270 access peripheraldevices such as ROM, Flash, Ethernet, Keyboard,
by the control of CPLD. Control the drivers-The bus drivers control signals
provided by this block.
Bus wait-Control the CPU reading and writing period.
Reset. One reset key on the keyboard is used toreset the PDA.
Cpu_gpio & cpld_led-Drive the GPIO of CPU.The other major software program work is focus on
Because the embedded system is a on-demand andscalable system, so the bootloader and board support
package must be rebuild according to the special hardwareresource. The bootloader suports downloading code byethernet port and debug the PDA software by UART port. Itsdownloading speed is faster than RS232 protocol.
The file system and divers can be configged by theWinCE platform builder, by this means one on-demandsoftware package can be customized conveniently. Forexample, the USB, SD card and UART drivers can beconfigured in platform builder, and then to compile andrebuild the WinCE kernel, the drivers are added.
The task application is based on GUI interface, input bytouching and display on LCD touch screen. Qt Embedded isused to develop the GUI interface. The GPS navigation and
barcode laser scanner applications are integrated in thesoftware.
But the wireless communication programm has not beenadded in this software package for the slow progress. TheZigbee wireless communication is a good choice to completewireless data transmission without any fee. In the future, thewireless communication function will be added in the PDA.
Figure 6. The GPS application of PDA.
IV. CONCLUSION
The embedded system for military or industry personaldata assistant is designed in the paper. The hardware andsoftware aimed at military and industry applications areworking in the harsh conditions. On demand of soldiers orworkers in field, the PDA components include CPU,memory, LCD touch screen, wireless communicationmodule, GPS, barcode laser scanner and interfaces etc. areintegrated. The features of PDA have a wide working
temperature range (-40c~80 c), impact resistance, portable
and low powoer consumption design. The PDA based onPXA270 CPU has an execllent performance. As Fig.7, thetrial production shows the PDA is suitable for theapplications of soldier or workers in the harsh environment.The laser scanner has decoded the book barcode successfully
and provided the hexadecimal data in an EVC window. TheGPS module has a locating precision about 15 meter. Theexperiments show that the mainly function of PDA had beenrealized.
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