Study on the development and implementation of web-based remote monitoring, reporting and fault diagnosis system

Abstract

The Internet and the World Wide Web (WWW) have created a revolution in the way information is archived, accessed and processed. The contributions of control systems and information technology are important in the functioning of today s world. Further, these systems have brought changes in communication modalities that have been no less profound. Combining industrial automation concepts with the powerful communication features of Internet, feasible network solutions can be designed using either wired or wireless networks. In these networks, Web based remote monitoring is classified into different categories based on the research directions such as major research, monitoring the process/ operations with the web enabled platform, process monitoring with control features over the web platform and monitoring, control as well as reporting and fault diagnosis features. The web enabled monitoring and control platform have many advantages for the engineering community as well for the business community such as monitoring the process and operational performance of the entire system from a remote location, providing expert support for performance optimization and minimizing the downtime between failures on the system control level or plant level. Recent research attempts that have been made in the web-based platforms for applications at different levels are in the areas of educational laboratory experimental studies, industrial applications etc., where the operations are required to be continuously monitored, controlled and fault diagnosis to be done away from plant locations. The detailed literature survey clearly reveals that web-based remote monitoring, control, reporting and fault diagnosis offers many advantages over conventional methods. However, detailed analysis of various web-based remote monitoring and control systems shows that most of the difficulties exist in architecture, data transfer, web-based graphical user interface, multiple user access, security and safety.