
failure is detected, etc. This creates pressure on the
safety of similar commercial components.
In the future, the possibility of supporting
higher bus speeds may be considered. This will
allow an even shorter delay between the change of
input of the MTB module and a reaction to the
change in a computer. Another enhancement could
be an automatic detection of the bus speed by MTB
modules, important when connecting new modules
or replacing broken modules on the fly. An
interesting possibility could also be an extension to
retransmit bus data over a wireless connection to
control parts of the track that are physically
separated from the control computer due to spatial,
architectural, or other reasons. An example would
be a railway consent console used in a foreign
station at a modular tracks meeting, where each
section of track is supplied by a different modeler
but we need to operate the track as a whole.
Excluding already-mentioned latency and
automatic bus speed detection, the last important
limitation of MTB v4 is the maximum number of
modules on one bus. From our point of view, 255
modules on one bus are enough, however, some
non-standard applications of MTBbus that need
more modules could be imagined. Simply adding
more bits for module address is not suitable, as
mechanisms like discovering new modules could
take a long time and latency can grow considerably.
A bus with a bigger maximum number of modules
would probably require a different media access
control mechanism.
6 Conclusion
MTB v4 has been implemented and deployed on all
tracks in the Railway Vehicles Control Laboratory
as well as on all tracks in MRC Brno I. That
includes 3 independent layouts with 103 MTB
modules in total. Most of these are MTB-UNI v2
modules with MTB-2-AVR add-on modules. 7
MTB-UNI v4 modules have been in operation for
100+ hours each without any major problems.
MTBbus v4 has been in operation for 300+ hours
in total with only minor difficulties. These issues
were solved with new firmware versions, where
uploading a new firmware over MTBbus turned out
to be very useful.
MTB v4 can also be used in other fields, where
centralized computer control of several dislocated
peripherals is used. Examples include home
automatization, production line controlling, or
remote monitoring. Generally, MTB is a cheaper
variant suitable for applications, where PLCs are
currently used.
Acknowledgments:
A major contribution to modernization was made
by the thesis of Jan Horáček.
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WSEAS TRANSACTIONS on INFORMATION SCIENCE and APPLICATIONS
DOI: 10.37394/23209.2024.21.1
Jan Horáček, Jiří Rybička, Robert Čížek