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Automated Data Acquisition System for Microwave Bench Slotted Line

Article in International Journal of Engineering Trends and Technology · November 2016

DOI: 10.14445/22315381/IJETT-V41P250

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 International Journal of Engineering Trends and Technology (IJETT) – Volume-41 Number-5 - November 2016

Automated Data Acquisition System for

Microwave Bench Slotted Line
Abdul Jaleel A.H1*, Gulam Rabbani1, J. M. Pathan1 and Shaikh Y. H2
1
Maulana Azad College, Aurangabad (MH) 431001, India
2
Shivaji College, Kannad, Dist Aurangabad (MH), India

Abstract - Measurement of dielectric constant using II. METHODOLOGY

Microwave bench slotted line is used in variety of The signal from detector of the microwave bench
experiments. Scanning of the slotted line is time slotted line are of the order of few tens of
consuming task therefore, for convenience and ease of microampere and therefore the signal has to be
operation we designed and constructed a microwave increased in strength and made compatible with the
bench slotted line scanning and data acquisition Analogue to Digital Converter used. For this purpose
system capable of automatic scanning of the slotted we designed, constructed and tested a current to
line. The microcontroller based system measures the voltage converter with suitable voltage gain to bring
detector current and records the position of detector the signal to desired level. The current to voltage
and the same is displayed on a LCD screen. The converter is constructed using operational amplifier
detector position and current data is sent to a LM 358 and the current to voltage converter resistor
computer that in turn receives and saves the data for used was 1.5 K [5–7, 9, 10]. It was observed that the
future use, this is accomplished via computer program voltage gain may need changes under different
developed in Visual Basic. The controlling program operating conditions therefore the voltage gain was
displays the real time incoming data of the position provided with a control so that the gain can be varied
and current received from the microcontroller based over a wide range to handle changing working
data acquisition system. Details of design and conditions. The ADC used for converting the analogue
construction are presented. input signal from the microwave detector amplifier
was the built in ADC that comes with the
Key words: Data Acquisition System, Microwave,
microcontroller used. The microcontroller used for the
Slotted Line, Microcontroller. Data acquisition system interfaces with the computer
was Atmega16 that belongs to AVR family of the
I. INTRODUCTION
microcontrollers from Atmel Corporation. Block
Microwave bench is used for measurement dielectric diagram of the entire system is shown in Figure 1.
properties of solids and liquids and in many
application a slotted line is used [1-3]. The slotted line Detector Amplifier Microcontroller
is scanned for 10 to 12 cm in step of a mm or even based Data
less to record the standing wave pattern formed in the Acquisition
slotted line. This process requires recording of
readings at every step which is a time consuming and Slotted Line
laborious task. In view of this automatic data
acquisition systems has been attempts in the direction LCD
[3-4]. Some of the systems are designed using printer Computer
Stepper Motor Display
port of computers [5, 9, 10], however these days new
computers and laptops are not equipped with a
conventional standard printer port. Therefore we Fig. 1 Block diagram of Microwave bench slotted line
designed and constructed a microcontroller based scanning and Data acquisition system
slotted line scanning system that can be directly
interfaced with a computer through a serial port or a
USB port. The system makes use of a powerful A stepper motor is used for scanning the
microcontroller from AVR family that has many slotted line under program control, the computer side
advanced features including ADC and serial port. The controlling program controls the movement of the
system scans the entire slotted line using a stepper slotted line microwave detector[8]. The stepper motor
motor and takes readings at every step. These readings used was a four phase stepper motor STM 601 rated at
are sent to computer via serial port and a computer 12 V DC, having a step size of 1.8 degrees per step
side controlling program receives these readings, with 200 steps per revolution. The stepper motor was
decodes them and displays the results graphically. The coupled to a screw with a pitch of 1mm and hence the
controlling program also saves the readings in a step size of 1.8 corresponds to 0.005 mm which was
computer file for further processing and analysis. found to be far more than sufficient. The movement of

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 International Journal of Engineering Trends and Technology (IJETT) – Volume-41 Number-5 - November 2016

the detector was equal to the pitch of the screw for one
complete revolution of the stepper motor in 200 steps.
The microcontroller based data acquisition
and control system includes a 4 line 20 character LCD
display to display the current position of the detector
on the slotted line and the detector current in
microamperes as shown in Figure 2. Necessary
interfacing electronics, firmware and algorithm for
conversion of the ADC data and tracking of position
of detector is provided.

Fig. 2 LCD display of the data acquisition and control

Fig. 3 Screenshot of the microwave bench slotted line
system showing the position and current of
scanning and data acquisition system.
the detector
On the initiation of the reading step by the The computer side controlling program
computer side controlling program, the begins the scanning of the slotted line already set to its
microcontroller based drive and data acquisition initial position and continues to record readings at
system moved the detector assembly by a preset every 0.5 mm till it completes the range of 8 cm.
distance say 0.5 mm after taking one reading and During the scan, the readings recorded are shown both
sending it to the computer. The data communication numerically and graphically on the display screen. At
between the microcontroller base circuitry and the the end of the scan the program saves all the readings
computer was accomplished using serial and the corresponding detector position in a computer
communication under RS 232 protocol. The data file using the name specified for the data file. A
format selected was having 8 bit of data, one start and screenshot of the Data acquisition system is shown in
one stop bit with no parity, the baud rate used was Fig. 3.
9600. This serial port setting required a value of
UBRR register equal to 72 (decimal) to appropriately III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
configure the serial port of the microcontroller. For a The current to voltage converter and amplifier was
given crystal frequency and baud rate, the value of tested for its performance and linearity using standard
UBRR register can be calculated as: calibrated meter. The performance was found
f osc satisfactory and up to the expectations.
UBRR 1 TABLE I
16 BAUD
The built in ADC with the microcontroller Amplifier Testing showing input-output relationship
atmega16 has a resolution of 10 bits (1 part in 1024)
and thus each ADC reading was a ten bit number in S. Input Output S. Input Output
the range of 0 – 1023 corresponding to a full scale No. mV mV No. mV mV
reading between 0 – 5 V DC. For transferring the
1 1 23 13 34.6 1120
ADC reading to controlling program using serial port
we needed transmission of two bytes of data[5,9,10]. 2 1.2 27 14 38.9 1263
If fact two bytes of data has 16 bits out of which only 3 4.9 149 15 40.1 1292
10 bits are used here, we used four higher bits to 4 8.9 286 16 41 1342
monitor integrity of the data sending sequence number 5 10.1 336 17 50 1637
of the data. 6 13 452 18 54 1790
7 13.5 469 19 61 1990
8 18 600 20 66 2190
9 20.5 667 21 67 2190
10 26.1 813 22 73 2390
11 28.6 921 23 87 2870
12 33.6 1094 24 88 2910
Current to voltage converting resistor was 1.5 K
and comparison of the input and output voltage of the
amplifier is shown in Table – I and graphically in
Figure 4.

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 International Journal of Engineering Trends and Technology (IJETT) – Volume-41 Number-5 - November 2016

3000 ACKNOWLEDGMENT
One of the authors is thankful to UGC, Delhi for
2500
y = 32.826x provision of grants for carrying out this research work
2
2000
R = 0.9996 under the MANF scheme.
Output (mV)

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Data

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IV. CONCLUSION
The microwave bench slotted line scanning and data
acquisition system along with the necessary
electronics, hardware and controlling software is
successfully designed, constructed and tested and
details of design, construction and performance are
presented.

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