Power industry and edge computing

Background

IoT infrastructure solutions have matured and are gradually entering the power industry. Power networks contain many edge data nodes; relying on a single cloud data center creates heavy communication and cloud resource loads, increasing costs and wasting energy, contrary to the aims of sustainable development.

Cloud-edge coordination in practice: deploying power and transportation edge gateways

Current power IoT applications largely focus on initial data acquisition, but today’s edge gateways also lay the groundwork for future power network simulation.
Advantech’s extensive edge expertise attracted a Chinese power systems company to jointly develop scalable data simulation network gateways as data sources for PSASP (Power System Analysis Software Package), ADPSS, DSATools, and CYME, and as a complementary platform for future edge regulation and control.
Challenges included hardware/software stability, high-performance data transmission and acquisition, general-purpose edge management, and full integration with specialized application ecosystems. After repeated evaluation, the customer selected Advantech’s industrial-grade ROM-5722 computer-on-module as the power edge gateway hardware platform.

Solution

Quality hardware

Advantech ROM-5722 is a SMARC computer-on-module based on the NXP i.MX8M Plus processor. Four Cortex-A53 cores at 1.8 GHz provide stable, efficient computing. ROM-5722 also offers extensive interfaces, including 2 LAN ports, multiple USB, UART, I2C, GPIO, PCIe3.0, and CAN-FD. Support for -40–85°C operation, together with a stable BSP customized by Advantech, supports long-term hardware and software reliability.

• Long-term hardware stability
• Complex peripheral expansion
• Long lifecycle supply

Hardware and software integration

Advantech’s low-level hardware/software engineering team averages over 10 years of industry experience across Yocto, Ubuntu, Debian, UOS, Kylin, Tongxin, Android, UNX, and other systems, with particular expertise in RTOS development. Years of research produced Advantech Industrial Linux (AIL), also known as JelinaOS. Building on this, Advantech combined cloud-edge coordination and hardware/software integration into Jelina, a comprehensive edge-to-cloud IoT management platform and edge computing software solution.
Jelina provides long-term system-level edge stability, secure remote global edge management software, and a comprehensive service framework for software and hardware platform upgrades. The team supports customer applications from UBOOT, EC/MCU and kernel optimization and trimming, filesystem customization and component adjustment, and application framework preparation through selected module development and full application migration. Advantech’s software team provides support spanning embedded development through edge-to-cloud integration.
Advantech’s general IoT experience, smart power plant solution design, and specialized energy storage projects have helped connect segments of the power industry. Numerous edge gateways extend China’s power network, helping collect more realistic operational data and fit more accurate models, laying the groundwork for automated dynamic power network adjustment.

Advantech Arm-based product software services

ROM-5722 specifications

• High-performance NXP Arm® Cortex®-A53 i.MX8M Plus Quad/Dual processor, up to 1.8 GHz
• 1 x Arm Cortex-M7 core
• Onboard 6 GB LPDDR4 memory, 4000 MT/s
• 1 x 4-lane MIPI-CSI, 1 x dual-channel LVDS or 1 x display interface
• 4 x USB2.0, 1 x USB 2.0 OTG, 4 x UART, 5 x I2C, 14 x GPIO, 1 x PCIe3.0
• 2 x Gigabit LAN, 2 x CAN-FD
• NPU AI performance of 2.3 TOPS
• Multiple operating systems, including Linux and Android

For more product and application information, call Advantech’s embedded solutions hotline at 400-001-9088.