Design of a microcontroller circuit with USB for M2M application using GSM network

Abstract

Microcontroller is a basic building block for implementing embedded systems. An embedded system is a special-purpose computer based block included in a given system . It has specific requirements and performs pre-defined tasks, unlike a general-purpose personal computer.. The designer of an embedded system may choose from off-shelf standard Microcontrollers chips or design his own structure using SoC (System On Chip) available technologies. M2M (short for machine-to-machine, man-to-machine or mobile-to-machine) is a new and growing technology available in the market for designing and implementing fully automated systems. Microcontroller acts like the brain of M2M which is estimated to get an exponential growth in the coming years. M2M enables the flow of data between machines and machines, and ultimately machines and people. Regardless of the type of machine or data, information usually flows from a machine over a network such as GSM network. Many companies like Ericsson, Nokia and Z- world provide the market by a lot of M2M developer kits which mainly depend on Microcontrollers. These microcontrollers use the RS 232C standard serial interface to communicate with the other circuits within the M2M system. Using the USB interface instead of the RS232 will improve the system performance because of its advantages and flexibility. It is to be noted here, that most of Laptops are not equipped with RS232 interface. The main objective of the thesis is to propose and design a Microcontroller structure that includes USB interface. On the other hand the design has to satisfy the requirements of developers employing the microcontroller in building M2M systems. The research also helps in studying and practicing new and advanced techniques in digital circuit simulation through using modern simulation packages to simulate the proposed Microcontroller.