A Journal of Software Engineering and Applications, 2013, 6, 11-15
doi:10.4236/jsea.2013.65B003 Published Online May 2013 (http://www.scirp.org/journal/jsea) 11
The Intelligent Terminal Design for Integrated Substation
Auxiliary System*
Enliang Pang1, Sanfeng Zhang2#, Yi Ji3
1College of Software Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing, China; 2College of Computer Science & Engineering, Southeast
University, Nanjing, China; 3Key Laboratory of Computer Network and Information Integration (Southeast University), Ministry of
Education, Nanjing, China.
Received 2013
ABSTRACT
The integrated substation auxiliary system is a project composed by software and hardware to help operators of a sub-
station carry daily maintain works. The intelligent terminal is the key part of the system and it provides important UI
and communication functions for the user. Smart phones can achieve higher bandwidth data communication, and at the
same time can carry Bluetooth communication, video call, multimedia display and other functions. Smart phone is a
potential common platform, suitable for the deplo yment of substation integr ated aux iliary syste m terminal. Based on th e
Android Smart phone platform, this paper develops intelligent client-side software for the integrated substation auxil-
iary system and it can realize the operation ticket control, the video call, the substation map display and other functions.
This client-side software has been applied in practice, and has gained good effects.
Keywords: Integrated Substation Auxiliary System; Android; Intelligent Terminal; Substation
1. Introduction
With the constant development of the economy, the de-
mand of industry, agriculture and resid ential electricity is
increasing, and the scale of national electrical system is
expanding gradually, so it is becoming more and more
important to guarantee of the electrical equipment work-
ing safely and reliably. The integrated substation auxil-
iary system is composed of many subsystems. for in-
stance, it has the prevention alarm system, the video sur-
veillance system, the fire protection system, the main
transformer sprinkler system, the switch circuit breaker
status acquisition system, the air-conditioning control
system, the heating control system, the access control
system, the micro-meteorological system, the dynamic
environment monitoring system, the centralized water
supply and drainage system, the lighting control system,
etc. It can improve the disadvantage in the traditional
substation environment and improves the safety and re-
liability of the substation, therefore, the integrated sub-
station aux iliary syste m h as been wid ely u sed . It can h elp
us monitor the operation status of the substation equip-
ment in real-time, and find an abnormality in an accident
rapidly and timely, and make countermeasures to prevent
accidents or abnormalities from expanding again. The
system has been basically realizing the comprehensive
monitoring system and centralized management, thus we
can dig the potential of the existing auxiliary system, so
we can do our best to reduce the cost and improve the
efficiency of the system. However, the existing auxiliary
systems have some problems in human-computer inter-
action, usability, security and so on. The loss is increas-
ing, because the mistake is increasing what does by the
operators of a substation. The more serious matter is that
the mistake may cause hurt to operators of a substation.
The main reason of these mistakes are coming from that
the trivial entry and the variety of steps in the operation
ticket (A written information for operation s in an electri-
cal system, including the scheduling of operations and so
on), it may lead to missing some operation steps or de-
stroy sequence of operation. Secondly, we also find that
there are many inconvenience in the operator’s working
process, for example, it`s very difficult for the operators
to find the operation-place where it has some problems,
the paper documents are more brittle than the electronic
data, and when we have questions about the operation,
we can`t get useful information convenient, etc. In order
to solve these practical problems, we do some researches
on existing facilities, and we achieve the intelligent ter-
minal system basing on the existing general smart mobile
platform. Our basic ideas and thoughts are shown in the
Figure 1.
2. Overall Frame of Intelligent Terminal
*This work is supported by the Jiangsu Province natural sciences fund
(No.BK2011335).
#Corresponding author. For the intelligent terminal of the integrated substation

The Intelligent Terminal Design for Integrated Substation Auxiliary System
12
auxiliary system, we chose Android mobile equ ipment as
the hardware platform, and the software system is de-
signed by ourselves. On the one hand, in order to obtain
the operation tickets, the terminal system should contact
with the operation ticket informatio n manage ment server,
on the other hand, it also needs to be connected with the
video SIP proxy server, so the operator can contact with
other colleagues and solves the problems in the work
timely. We use C/S network structure between the ter-
minal and the server, and realized the connection via
WiFi. Meanwhile, in order to make the terminal system
operate easily and have good scalability, we also de-
signed the system architecture of the terminal. It is
shown in Figure 2.
1) GUI: The user interface layer is on the top of the
auxiliary system's structure. The purpose is to provide
some simple, beautiful, convenient and friendly inter-
faces with users. The layer includes the login interface,
the operation ticket display interface, the video call in-
terface, the substation map interface, and the system
setup interface, etc. All of that, the operation ticket inter-
face is the most important for our intelligent terminal
system, and it can mainly restrict the operation in order
to ensure the integrity of the process, which means that
the current step must be completed before they can get
the next step.
2) Business logic processing layer: Business logic
processing layer is the most important of the intelligent
terminal system. All business processing depend on this
layer. This layer respond the events from the user inter-
face and carry out the corresponding business logic
processing, then control the terminal interface’s update
or jump. Besides, this layer can also detect the update of
data from the data storage layer and synchronized to the
user interface, it is mainly used for display of the video
real-time. At present the business logic layer is mainly
composed of four function modules, they are the Blue-
tooth event response module, the video data analysis
Figure 1. Function overview map.
Figure 2. The design of the overall framework.

The Intelligent Terminal Design for Integrated Substation Auxiliary System 13
module, the layout control module and the system set-
tings module. The four control modules provide the
Bluetooth label identification, the video call, the opera-
tion ticket display an d the function of the system settings
separately.
3) Data cache management layer: The data storage
layer is used to cache the Bluetooth label data, the opera-
tion ticket data, and the video data, etc. And the data
stored in the data storage layer.
4) Network transport layer: The network transport
layer is responsible for the communication between the
intelligent terminal syste m and the outside world, includ-
ing the interaction between the terminal and the SIP
Proxy server, as well as communication with the opera-
tion ticket information management server. The SIP
communication module is responsible for data exchange
with the SIP server. Thereby establishing a connection
with another terminal of the video call and realizing the
video data's exchange between the two terminals. The
TCP communication module is in charge of the interac-
tion of the terminal and the document server, including
two data flow direction. They are the login request from
the intelligent terminal system to the server and the data
which server sends to th e terminal. And login request can
realize the security management.
3. Design of The Intelligent Terminal
The Android smart phone has camera, CPU and other
equipment in hardware and has higher data processing
ability. Combining with the data processing ability of
smart phones, we can achieve that the show of the opera-
tion ticket, the video call, the map display, etc. So we can
improve the whole work efficiency of operators in the
substation further. The function display is shown as the
following Figure 3.
3.1. Operation Ticket Display
Firstly, we shouldn`t let operators of a substation know
the next step if they haven`t complete the current step.
We need some hard ware to realize this model. Therefore,
the substation needs to install the Bluetooth electronic
label. We believe that the whole substation needs to in-
stall lots of electronic labels and the radius of the circle
area is about twenty meters. While the terminal system is
also added the Bluetooth signal searching technology, it
can search the Bluetooth device and the Bluetooth label
within 10 ~ 30 meters. The designed principle of this
module is based on the Figure 4. That is, the Bluetooth
label is activated, when the Bluetooth label get into the
coverage of the intelligent terminal wireless identification
system. If both of them can through the authentication
and the certification, then they can connect to each other.
So the intelligent terminal system can make sure that
operators get into the right place. When the news is
transmitted to the operation ticket show thread, the
thread`s monitor give response. Fo llowing the "n ext step"
button is shown at the current operation ticket interface
and the intelligent terminal system makes warning to tell
the operator that he has arrived at the correct position.
In addition, if the operator thinks that the current step
has been completed, so he could click the "next step"
button, then entering the next step. At the same time, in
order to make the intelligent terminal system`s use more
convenient, our intelligent terminal system also establish
the server with C/S network structure. As long as the
operator connect with the server, the task will download
to the terminal system and form the operation ticket
automatically, thus the complexities and the difficulties
are simplified in working greatly.
3.2. The Video Call
The realization of the visual IP telephony multimedia
terminal base on Android attains th e great security to our
video call, and the effect of the video call is perfect. The
operator will meet a lot of problems which he can`t so lve
by himself in his working. So the traditio nal way with the
phone can`t make the problems to be described very clear.
The situation will be clear reflected to the monitor center
Log i n/Log
out
Show of the
operation
ticket
Video
call
Map
display System
settings
Figure 3. Function display pic ture.
The Bluetooth electronic label
The Bluetoot h
label activated
Aut hentic ation and
certification
Establish
connection
Location
information
Dis tance devi ce
with the label in
10 ~ 30m
The label`s listening thread
Figure 4. Bluetooth identification process.

The Intelligent Terminal Design for Integrated Substation Auxiliary System
14
in time by using our video call module. The video call
also can strengthen the grasp of the monitor center to the
substation and improve the ability of commanding on
time. In our intelligent terminal system, when the opera-
tor makes the video call, we will start the video call
thread. In this process, the basic video data stream comes
from the Internet by the data receive thread. After dealing
with these data, it will be shown on the user interface of
the terminal system and be provided for the users. The
following Figure 5 is the diagram of the data stream.
3.3. The Displaying of the Substation Map
Due to the appearance of substation equipment is mostly
similar, the fresh staff can`t be familiar with the envi-
ronment. It is very difficult for them to distinguish the
position clearly. So the terminal system design s the func-
tion of the substation map display that can help the
workers, and the map shows different information on the
different situations clearly. Our map data is put into the
terminal system in advance and stores in the terminal
system data area. When the users open the navigation
function, the map data will be shown on the user interface.
At the same time, the GPS model is added by us, and it
provides the GPS data for the users. What's more, it
shows the right situation of the operator on our map to
realize the map navigation function. The following Fig-
ure 6 is our general desi g n st ructure.
3.4. The System Settings
The system settings function is assisting other three func-
tions mainly. The first is that the operator can set differ-
ent warning voices to prompt them weather they get to
the right situation. There are different warning voices to
the different people’s styles. This design improves the
friendliness of the system. In addition, you can choose
the clarity of the video call. When the network environ-
ment is poor, you may choose the lower clarity, while
you can also choose the better clarity if the network en-
vironment is in a good status or you can choose to turn
off the transmission of the voice, etc. Therefore, in order
to increase the practicality of this system, we also add the
modification function of the PORT and the server IP. It
can make the terminal system be suitable for different
substations under differen t servers. In the system settings
function, we add interfaces which are supplied by other
modules. After users click on these buttons, the com-
mands are transferred to the relevant module and realize
the control to the module. Our control commands trans-
mission picture is the following Figure 7.
4. Implementation and Test
The operator opens the system, the intelligent terminal
system connects to the server and downloads the operator
tickets of daily maintain works after the identity v erifica-
tion. So the operator can enter the working status. The
terminal system shows an operator ticket on the user in-
terface, after that, the operator reaches specified position
according to the operator ticket and refer to the substation
map. If that is the right position, the Bluetooth system
will make the prompt and show "next step" button. If
there are some problems during the whole process, you
can connect to the command center by the video call
function and solve those problems with the help of your
colleague. The whole process is shown by the following
Figure 8.
Follow the above describe, we finished the develop-
ment of the design by ourselves. The software interfaces
are shown as the following Figure 9. (a) is our login in-
terface, (b) is the main interface, (c) is the selection in-
terface for the operation ticket and (d) is the map inter-
face.
Receive
information
thread
Image
processing
and display
Video
showing
Figure 5. The direction of the data stream.
Map display
Map dataGPS
positioning
Figure 6. Map shows design.
Set up
Sound
Control
Video
sharpness
control
IP
and
port control
Figure 7. The control commands transmission picture.

The Intelligent Terminal Design for Integrated Substation Auxiliary System
15
Continue
to wait
N
N
Login
Download Operation
Ticket
Open the
Operatio n Ti ck et
Show an operation
ticket
Whether
the dete cted
p
os itio n is co rr ect
“nest step”
button show
Whether to
complete the work
and go to the next
step
Solve the
p
roblem with
Video call
Y
Y
Display the
necessary
operati o n of
the current
location
Flicker and
hint to the
correct
position
“next stop”
ca n click on
(c) The operation ticket choice interface
Checked
person on
duty toda yMap navigation
Weather
Information
Show
other
information
(Represents operator`s location, Represent s Bluetooth label`s loc ation)
(d) The map interface
Figure 9. Product display.
5. Conclusions
The generalization of the intelligent auxiliary system in
substation has important meaning for the smart power
network. The system improves the productivity, reduces
the possible of the mistake by man-made, reduces the
workload of workers and makes the smart power network
work safer. This paper uses the existing technology rea-
sonably and creates a more powerful and valuable intel-
ligent terminal system.
Figure 8. Workflow picture.
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(b)The main interface