Year
2007
Abstract
A storage facility with a total area of about 100 square meters was built with a purpose of testing both hardware and software components of the fissile material storage monitoring concept. This facility is divided into two rooms that simulate the actual vault and operator rooms. Both rooms house a number of equipment items intended for the storage facility monitoring application, including motion and break-beam sensors, radiation monitoring portal, radio frequency (RF) tags tracking container temperature and position, video cameras, and the first version of the Advanced Remote Monitoring System (ARMS). Data is collected and analyzed by unique software code. This paper presents the principles that served as a basis for implementing software developed for the Facility-to-Facility (F2F) monitoring system at the Fissile Material Storage Monitoring Facility located in Sarov, Russia. The software ties together a complete system of collecting and assessing sensor events as well as obtaining images from video cameras connected to the system. The system is built as a client/server-type system. Data received from various modules/system clients is stored at the server in the MS SQL Server database. Currently, the system modules have been implemented as follows: control of video cameras via the TCP/IP protocol, operations with RF-tags used in the F2F system, and transmission of data via the Echelon bus or ARMS. The modules are networked to the server via the TCP/IP protocol, and the server ensures that all of the modules written into its configuration file stay connected. In the process of the software design, special attention was given to the issue of reliable network communication between the modules and the server, and authenticity of data transmitted. The paper describes the data structure used for storing and displaying information on the F2F status, methods of improving reliability of the system functions, and a mechanism of getting images from video cameras without overworking the cameras or transmission channels, as well as a website structure that allows both assessment of the F2F status and system configuration.