XML-Based Reconfigurable Measurement System

Reconfigurable software is highly desired in automatic measurement system for low-cost products and short time to market. In this paper, we propose a software architecture, which is built on top of component and hierarchy software bus models. In our architecture, the measurement system software is viewed as an integration of a set of reusable components, which are modelled with a set of event-based extern interfaces for functional definitions, internal interfaces for modification of own properties, a data process logic for execution of behavioural specifications and a series of communication ports for data exchange with others. The behaviours of the measurement system software can be viewed as an integration of components and their interactions and specified in application specification, which is based on extend markup language (XML) and independent of component implementation. When the measurement system needs to be reconfigured to adapt to the changing application requirements, the software using our architecture can be easily reconfigured by changing reusable components and their interactions in application specification and reconfiguration can be achieved at the executable code level after the software is implemented. Finally, a reconfigurable measurement platform bases on above software architecture for testing engineering signal has been developed and the goal of higher reconfigurability, lower development and maintenance costs are achieved with the proposed architecture.