Development of a Wireless Microcontroller-based SCADA RTU

Abstract

This paper presents a methodology to build a wireless SCADA Remote Terminal Unit (RTU) through a microcontroller. Using a microcontroller as a SCADA RTU eliminates the complexity of building current SCADA systems. It minimizes the space it covers and removes long communication lines as it communicates through Wi-Fi. The proposed methodology uses three microcontrollers to support the data acquisition, the server, and the supervisory control branch of the SCADA system. The study proves that the microcontrollers are able to handle real-time monitoring with the voltage, current readings and the states of the circuit breakers, as well as supervisory control by turning the circuit breakers on and off remotely.