Journal of Physics: Conference Series

PAPER • OPEN ACCESS

Wireless communication design of internet of things based on FPGA and

WiFi Module
To cite this article: F W Wibowo 2020 J. Phys.: Conf. Ser. 1577 012035

View the article online for updates and enhancements.

This content was downloaded from IP address 38.145.112.248 on 16/07/2020 at 13:44

2nd 2019 ICERA IOP Publishing
Journal of Physics: Conference Series 1577 (2020) 012035 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1577/1/012035

Wireless communication design of internet of things based on

FPGA and WiFi Module

F W Wibowo1
1
Informatics Department, Universitas Amikom Yogyakarta, Yogyakarta 55283, Indonesia
Email: [email protected]

Abstract. The implementation of the internet of things (IoT) has been many researched. Some
applications have their own designs and special uses. Low-cost designs and multi-usage are
always targeted on the implementation either using a microcontroller or field programmable
gate arrays (FPGAs). The reconfigurable device of FPGA in some cases has advantages in its
uses. This paper has designed the communication of the radio frequency (RF) for the IoT using
wireless communication based on the FPGA and wireless fidelity (WiFi) of the ESP8266 WiFi
module. The research methodology used in this paper was a simulation using Xilinx ISE
software for the device of the Xilinx Spartan-3E FPGA that has been configured using Very
High Speed Integrated Circuit Hardware Description Language (VHDL). The result of the
ESP8266 driver based on the FPGAs is sent to the JSON based website.

1. Introduction
The internet of things or usually it is called IoT because it connects all things is a system where the
internet is connected to the analog world via ubiquitous sensors, and then it is processed, transformed,
and transmitted into the digital world. The IoT has a role in the dynamic control of the industrial
process and daily life that can be applied to the appliances [1]. This can also improve the resource
utilization ratio so it takes the efficiency and effectiveness in its use, so the relationship between
humans and nature can be better and forming an intellectual entity. It can also emerge communicating
between the physical world and the information world. It has been assumed that the IoT will be
implemented on the devices up to 50 billion units by 2020 [2], but this number can be lower than what
was predicted. Data is established from the sensors and processed by the control or processor points so
these machines or devices can communicate with each other. It can also manage the data and enforce
proper access control while the data could be large since the transmitted data is in a real-time process
and involving a wide array of sensors. In providing the real-time data analytics, it should be aware of
the sensor inputs. For this purpose, it can apply the Kalman filter to detect the value error of the input
sensors [3]. The scalable should be done in the use of the large-scale device networks and monitor
various parameters.
The implementation of the field programmable gate array (FPGA) can be a solution for the
challenges at the core of IoT implementation. It can promise the design approach that addresses on the
power efficiency, incompatible interfaces, and migration to a new processor due to increased
requirements [4]. The technology implementation paradigm for IoT using FPGA has many roles in
reliable systems [5]. Even in the era of industry 4.0, the IoT absolutely could be applied in the
production activities with its capabilities [6]. So it can’t be doubt that the FPGA implementation in the
field of the IoT is still having place in the low-cost experiment and implementation since it may
reconfigure on this device so that it can design with high interoperability with others device or signal.
This paper addresses the wireless communication design using reconfigurable device which is FPGA

Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence. Any further distribution
of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.
Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd 1
2nd 2019 ICERA IOP Publishing
Journal of Physics: Conference Series 1577 (2020) 012035 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1577/1/012035

and the WiFi module of ESP8266 as the data transmitting and receiving based on the radio frequency.
The ESP8266 WiFi module is usually used in implementing IoT or embedded systems applications
within the Arduino microcontroller. So this paper also will analyze the WiFi interface design of the
IoT implementation.

2. Related Works
The applications of the IoT based on the microcontroller has been spread widely and many of the
project has been used to get low-cost, effectively, and efficiently application. In a monitoring system
that has been employed in the wireless sensor network (WSN) is also using a part of the IoT [7]. The
elements of this monitoring consist of sensors, processors, and wireless modules. The sensor is
functioned to catch the analog signal or data, thus this signal or data is sent to the processors which are
processing in digital signal or data to yield information. The IoT is also using transmitting (TX) and
receiving (RX) data wirelessly in its implementation. In its implementation for this TX/RX parts for
the radio frequency (RF) module can be designed using field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) [8].
The application of WSN could be used to collect information from the nodes that are designed like IoT
but using a wireless connection. FPGA could be involved in the implementation of the monitoring
system. According to the implementation of [9], it employes FPGA using sensors i.e. pH sensor, water
level sensor, gas sensor, and temperature sensor. Each sensor module has had own analog-to-digital
converter (ADC) module so it employed the FPGAs for the digital data processor only. While
transmitting data for the values, it utilizes ZigBee or XBee module for transmitting wirelessly. ZigBee
module has characterization use indoor and outdoor as shown in [10]. As implementing multi-ports of
the sensor inputs, it could apply the reconfigurable first-in-first-out (rFIFO) for the design in FPGAs
since this method can provide an optimum solution at different frequencies of the IoT architecture
[11]. In addition, the FPGAs are not used for signal/data processing only, but it can also design such
an algorithm on it [12]. In implementing the algorithm on this device, it should know the properties of
the hardware design and of course the work principles or mechanisms of the algorithm. The higher
accuracy could be reached by computation and processing raw data that has been resulted by the
FPGA system which has been designed and used to analyze with lower execution time [13].
This paper is describing to program the ESP8266 WiFi module using reconfiguring of the
Xilinx Spartan-3E FPGA. For reconfiguring purposes, this paper is using a hardware description
language of very high-speed integrated circuit hardware description language (VHDL). The
implementation of this WiFi module programmed using FPGA has also been applied by [14], but this
paper boundary is only applying the design on the scope of the communication between both FPGA
and ESP8266 WiFi module and sending the data from the read-only memory (ROM) that has been
programmed in the FPGAs to the website based on JavaScript Object Notation (JSON). JSON is a data
format that is used to interchange and store the data so it is a subset of the JavaScript. JSON uses an
extension format of .json, but when it is defined in the other format like .html it is performed in quotes
as a string JSON and could be included onto a variable. This format is easy to transfer between web
servers and clients.

3. Research Methodology
The research methodology used in this paper is a simulation of the design using FPGA and ESP8266
WiFi module. The ESP8266 WiFi module is a low-cost platform and effectively used in the
communication between devices and control via wireless or internet. It can be applied standalone or
connected to the other device [15]. It is often used in the IoT applications and attached to the
microcontroller as mentioned before. There are some types in the markets and easy to find either
online or physically electronic shops (offline), namely ESP-01, ESP-02, ESP-03, ESP-14, etc. For the
functions hosted on the module, it is similar but the difference is on the general-purpose input-output
(GPIO). The ESP-01 is a module that allows accessing the controller device via the internet. This
module is categorized as a system on chip (SoC) and not always require the controller device to drive
the input/output (I/O). In the market, there are two kinds of this type namely blue and black printed
circuit boards. The difference is on its memory capacity that affects the setting, the blue one is 512Kb
whereas the other is 1Mb. This module can act as a computer mini with limited GPIO. It contains 4

2
2nd 2019 ICERA IOP Publishing
Journal of Physics: Conference Series 1577 (2020) 012035 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1577/1/012035

GPIOs which are GPIO0, GPIO1, GPIO2, and GPIO3, VCC as the input voltage of 3.3 Volt of direct
current (DC), ground, reset, and chip enable. For the special functions in transmitting and receiving
data, it is usually attached to the GPIO-1 for transmitting serial data and GPIO-3 for receiving serial
data. The ESP8266 WiFi module is built-in AT firmware so for its communication, it is using AT
command operation [16]. The WiFi module of ESP 8266 can be depicted as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Configuration of ESP8266 WiFi Module.

The ESP8266 WiFi module in this paper is only employing TX and RX to make communication
with the FPGAs. The FPGA used in this paper is Xilinx XC3S500E Spartan-3E FPGA. The
configuration in the connection among FPGA, ESP8266 wifi module, and the website based on JSON
can be shown in figure 2.

Figure 2. Diagram of connection among FPGAs, ESP8266 WiFi Module, and website.

The reconfiguration for this ESP8266 driver on the FPGA consists of clock divider, controller, read-
only memory (ROM), register, TX, and RX modules. The clock divider module is used to yield the
appropriate clock as the baud rate used to communicate between the devices i.e. 9600 bps. The
controller module is used to control the process of interfacing with driving the ROM. The ROM itself
contains AT command data that used to communicate with the ESP8266 WiFi module. The driven

3
2nd 2019 ICERA IOP Publishing
Journal of Physics: Conference Series 1577 (2020) 012035 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1577/1/012035

data from the ROM will be conveyed to the register thus the data will be transmitted via the
transmitter module. Since this configuration in communicating serial data is employing the mode of
universal asynchronous receiver/transmitter (UART), so the module is not necessary
transmitting/receiving the clock in both communications to the ESP8266 WiFi module but both TX
and RX modules must use the clock as seen in figure 2. The data that programmed onto the ROM as
below,
1. AT command to reset the ESP8266 that uses “AT+RST\r\n”
2. AT command to join the access router for connecting to the internet that uses
“AT+CWJAP=”<SSID>”,”<password>””. SSID stands for service set identifier which is the
name of the WiFi network used, while a password is a password for connecting to this SSID.
3. AT command to connect to the website that uses
“AT+CIPSTART=”<type>”,”<website_name>”,<port>”. The type is choosing one between two
types which are transmission control protocol (TCP) or user datagram protocol (UDP). The TCP
is a connection-oriented when it is set then the data can be sent bidirectional, while UDP is a
connectionless internet protocol.
4. AT command to specify the number of bytes with using “AT+CIPSEND=<number of bytes>”
5. Send the data with JSON format that uses sequential data as
“<website_name>/ferry/fpga/add?data1=<number1>&data2=<number2>”. It means that
<website_name > is the name of the destination website that the data is sent, /ferry is the folder
on the website, and /fpga is the sub-folder on the website. This folder is created to simple in a
grouping of the data if the data wouldn’t be grouped in one folder so the folder might not be
necessarily made. While for adding the data can use
“add?data1=<number1>&data2=<number2>”. The variable of the number e.g. something like
the value of sensor data is written in <number1> and <number2> depends on the sequential of
data.
In programming the data of ROM, the data must be written using an American standard code for
information interchange (ASCII). The representation of this code can be shown in figure 3.

Figure 3. ASCII Code.

4
2nd 2019 ICERA IOP Publishing
Journal of Physics: Conference Series 1577 (2020) 012035 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1577/1/012035

An example code in the ROM that is used to connect to WiFi access point of ferry with password
123456 can be written as Table 1.

Table 1. AT command converted into ASCII code in VHDL.

A → x"41" = → x"3d" , → x"2c" “ → x"22"
T → x"54" “ → x"22" “ → x"22" \r → x"0d"
+ → x"2b" f → x"66" 1 → x"31" \n → x"0a"
C → x"43" e → x"65" 2 → x"32" → x"FF"
W → x"57" r → x"72" 3 → x"33"
J → x"4a" r → x"72" 4 → x"34"
A → x"41" y → x"79" 5 → x"35"
P → x"50" “ → x"22" 6 → x"36"

In the example code above, the UART can convey 8 bits or 1 byte once transmitting so it can be
represented by one character of ASCII. The data storage in ROM could be divided into 16 characters
and the blank character could be filled as 0xFF. For connecting to WiFi, it uses AT+CWJAP with
SSID = ferry and password=123456. The symbol of \r \n, it is also known as carriage return (CR) and
line feed (LF), is used as a new line character or similar with the enter key function. In the ASCII
code, they are represented by 0x0d (13) and 0x0a (10) respectively whereas in the VHDL code, bit
vector constants of hexadecimal are written as the notation of x”--”. Each AT command that has been
defined must be ended by \r \n to be executed in programming.

4. Result and Discussion

The VHDL code of the ESP8266 driver that is programmed into the Xilinx Spartan-3E FPGA has a
configuration of the device as 3s500efg320-4. The utilization of the components that has been
consumed for the design of the ESP8266 driver based on Xilinx Spartan-3E FPGA (3s500efg320-4)
can be concluded in Table 2.

Table 2. Consumption of ESP8266 based on Xilinx Spartan-3E FPGA (3s500efg320-4).

Components Number Total Percentage

Slices 231 4656 4%

Slice Flip-Flops 238 9312 2%
4-input Look-Up Tables 367 9312 3%
Input/Output 5
Bonded IOBs 5 232 2%
BRAMs 1 20 5%
GCLKs 1 24 4%

The data that is sent to the website based on JSON has format as
“<website_name>/ferry/fpga/add?data1=4&data2=7\r\n”. In this format, the data1 is equal to 4 and
data2 is 7 are illustrating the inputs if there are inputs on both data. This can be varied depends on the
inputs used to sensor input value. To check the result of the data on the website, if this data has been
successfully sent, can be checked using the format “<website domain>/ferry/fpga” as shown in figure
4. This figure shows that the transmitting data has been successfully done. With some modifications, it
can be used for transmitting and receiving data.

5
2nd 2019 ICERA IOP Publishing
Journal of Physics: Conference Series 1577 (2020) 012035 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1577/1/012035

Figure 4. Result of transmitting data on JSON based website.

5. Conclusion
The design of wireless communication using FPGA and the ESP8266 WiFi module has been
configurated. The design used in this paper is using the communication mode of UART. The
reconfiguration module for this ESP8266 driver on the FPGA consists of clock divider, controller,
read-only memory (ROM), register, TX, and RX modules. For future works, the input values of data
can result from the sensor input values. The input from the smartphone can also be used to control
using a JSON based website to communicate with the ESP8266 WiFi module that is connected to the
FPGA in controlling devices.

6. References
[1] Wibowo F W and Hidayat F 2017 A low-cost home automation system based-on internet of
things Journal of Telecommunication, Electronic and Computer Engineering Vol 9 No 2-4 pp
155-159
[2] Evans D 2011 The internet of things: how the next evolution of the internet is changing
everything White Paper of Cisco Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG)
[3] Wibowo F W and Putra W S 2019 Sensor array fault detection technique using Kalman filter
IEEE Proceedings of the 2019 International Seminar on Research of Information Technology
and Intelligent Systems (ISRITI) pp 124-128 DOI: 10.1109/ISRITI48646.2019.9034591
[4] EDN 2016 FPGAs solve challenges at the core of IoT implementation accessed at
https://www.edn.com/fpgas-solve-challenges-at-the-core-of-iot-implementation/ on 4 August
2019
[5] Rupani A, Saini D, Sujediya G, and Whig P 2016 A review of technology paradigm for IOT on
FPGA International Journal of Advanced Research in Computer and Communication
Engineering Vol 5 Issue 9 pp 61-64
[6] Wibowo F W 2018 A dynamic intelligent control analysis on the wireless smart machine
environnments in the industry 4.0 IEEE Proc. of 2018 International Seminar on Research of
Information Technology and Intelligent Systems (ISRITI 2018) 8864299 pp 389-393
[7] Aditya T W and Wibowo F W 2016 Wireless sensor network and geographic information
system based monitoring system Asian Journal of Information Technology vol 15 no 15 pp
2571–2577
[8] Wibowo F W 2015 Implementation of Viterbi algorithm based-on field programmable gate
array for wireless sensor network Advanced Science Letters Vol 21 No 11 pp 3521-3525

6
2nd 2019 ICERA IOP Publishing
Journal of Physics: Conference Series 1577 (2020) 012035 doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1577/1/012035

[9] Balaji N, Vijayalakshmi S, Durgadevi K, Mohanraj K, and Mangayarkarasi 2019 FPGA

implementation of smart water quality monitoring system International Journal of Innovative
Technology and Exploring Engineering Vol 8 Issue 11 pp 3136-3139
[10] Perdana R C and Wibowo F W 2016 Quality of service for XBEE in implementation of wireless
sensor network Journal of Engineering and Applied Sciences Vol 11 No 8 pp 692-697
[11] Gupta S, Sharma M, and Chawla R 2020 FPGA implementation of r-FIFO-based high-speed
data acquisition IOT architecture model SN Applied Sciences Vol 2 pp 661
[12] Wibowo F W 2019 An analysis of FPGA hardware platform based artificial neural network
Journal of Physics: Conference Series Vol 1201 No 1 pp 012009
[13] Satpathy S, Mohan P, Das S, and Debbarma S 2019 A new healthcare diagnosis system using an
IoT-based fuzzy classifier with FPGA The Journal of Supercomputing
[14] Abdul A M, Krishna B M, Murthy K S N, and Khan H 2016 IOT based home automation using
FPGA Journal of Engineering and Applied Sciences Vol 11 No 9 pp 1931-1937
[15] Ai-Thinker Inc 2017 ESP-01/07/12 series modules user’s manual V1.1
[16] Espressif Systems 2019 ESP8266: AT Instruction Set Version 3.0.2

Acknowledgments
Author thanks to publisher who has given chance to publish this paper.