What is IHAL?

3.105c Documentation

Past Versions (1.5 - 3.008)

Latest News

1-7-2012: IHAL and the IHAL API were demonstrated in KBSI’s booth at the 2011 International Telemetering Conference in Las Vegas, NV.  During this demonstration, KBSI’s InstrumentMap application was able to connect to two different vendor configuration engines (L-3’s VistaTEC and XidML’s DAS Studio), load the current configurations, and modify settings on all devices.  The configurations pre-loaded in each configuration engine consisted of 1 Data Acquisition Unit and 3 analog signal conditioning cards.  The version of IHAL and the API used during this demo (version 3.105c) has been posted to this web site.

8-3-2011: The IHAL language and API specification are currently undergoing review for standardization by the Vehicular Instrumentation/Transducer committee of the Range Commanders Council Telemetry Group (RCC TG). The standardization process begin in October 2010 and will be complete by October 2012. An intermediate version of the IHAL standard will be published here prior to the 2011 International Telemetering Conference on October 24th-27th (http://www.telemetry.org/). This version of IHAL will be used in a multi-vendor demonstration at ITC 2011.

10-26-2010: KBSI is currently attending the International Telemetering Conference (ITC) in San Diego.  At our booth we are demonstrating the configuration of L-3 data acquisition hardware using IHAL and the IHAL API.  This year’s demo includes the configuration of PCM format descriptions.

10-25-2010: IHAL Schema and API version 3.008 has been released.  This version will be demonstrated at KBSI’s booth at ITC 2010.  Changes in version 3.008 include (for a complete list, see the readme contained in the schema zip file):

	Support for PCM format metrics in native IHAL.
	Integration with TMATS XML to provide support for PCM frame descriptions.
	Improved Calibration descriptions.
	Association of channels with measurement names.
	Addition of an error schema for reporting Web Service errors.

Changes to the API include:

	Ability to retrieve and configure PCM Format metrics.
	Ability to retrieve a list of measurements currently accessible to a given DAU.
	Ability to retrieve, add and remove measurements to PCM formats.
	Ability to issue commands to compile and load the configuration to the hardware.
	Enhanced Web Service error reporting.

11-05-2009:  IHAL 3.007 is now released.  In addition to the schema, IHAL 3.007 also includes a new Vendor Web Service API specification for communicating configuration changes directly with Vendor hardware/software using IHAL as the specification language.  This is the version of IHAL that was used in the demonstration with L-3 presented at ITC in Las Vegas last week.

Changes in version 3.007 include (For a complete list, see the readme contained in the schema zip file):

	Addition of a “RestrictedParameter” element to the “_use” section to allow parameters to be restricted beyond their pool-level specification based on the current configuration.  For instance, setting a gain to a certain value may cause a “RestrictedParameter” to be enforced on the possible values for offset.
	Support for Boolean parameters.
	Support for Custom configurable parameters.
	New parameters added to signalConditioningCharacteristics.

11-05-2009:  A demonstration was held at the International Telemetering Conference in Las Vegas last week in the L-3 booth.  In this demonstration, IHAL was used to configure 3 different L-3 signal conditioning cards in L-3’s VistaTEC software using a standard RESTful web service interface.  As each parameter is set, the vendor web service returns an “impact” specification in IHAL, which includes all of the parameters and parameter ranges affected by the change. 

A presentation giving details of the demonstration can be downloaded here.  If you would like more information about the demo, please contact either John Hamilton (JLHamilton@kbsi.com) or Joe Sulewski (joe.sulewski@L-3com.com).

03-10-2009: The Schema for IHAL Version 3.006 is now available on this website. This version , along with example instance documents, will be presented to the Vehicular Instrumentation / Transducer Committee at the 119th RCC TG meeting in San Antonio on March 12th.

Changes in version 3.006 include

	Updated to support description of example configurations provided by RCC
	Support for more card types
	Support for more hardware function types, and
	More detail added to hardware description at all levels.

11-24-2008: The Schema for IHAL Version 3.0 is now available on this website. This is the version of IHAL presented at ITC 2008 in San Diego last month. The 3.0 schema is available through the link at the top of this page.

Changes in version 3.0 include

	More detail added to transducer schemas,
	Introduction of a first-class "DAU" instrument,
	More detail of various hardware functions, and
	Added seperate pool for hardware "cards".

03-11-2008: The latest IHAL updates were presented to the Vehicular Instrumentation / Transducer Committee at the 117th RCC TG meeting in Yuma, AZ. The slides from this presentation are available here.

03-11-2008: The IHAL 2.1 Schema is now available through the link at the top of this page

Changes in version 2.1 include

	Split into multiple xsd files for ease of maintenance and extensibility,
	Developed Schema for Transducers,
	Eliminated first-class hardware elements (but kept first-class instrument functions), and
	Added pool for hardware functions.

08-21-2007: The slides presented at the 116th Telemetry Group Conference in Dayton, OH are available here.

8-01-2007: The complete IHAL 2.0 schema is now available. If you have any comments or questions, please send them to JLHamilton@kbsi.com.

Changes in version 2.0 include

	separating Instrument Hardware from Instrument Function,
	reducing specification for multi-channel instruments,
	combining configurable with non-configurable parameters, and
	simplifying of use-level instrumentation specification.

IHAL Overview

The Instrumentation Hardware Abstract Language (IHAL), developed by KBSI as part of the ISAIIH project, is used to specify instrumentation network and hardware configurations as well as to act as a command and query language that provides a more elegant and robust means for specifying, simulating, managing, querying, and controlling T&E instrumentation networks and systems.  On a larger scale, such a language can be used in diverse telemetry, instrumentation, and remote sensing areas such as process control, sensor networks relating to homeland security, and mission-critical applications in space, aeronautics, healthcare, and manufacturing.

IHAL is designed on the principle that the same language must serve three roles:  (1) as a descriptive language for specifying and describing the components and configuration of an instrumentation system, (2) as a command language for issuing configuration and data commands to instrumentation hardware, and (3) as a query language for requesting the current state of instrumentation hardware.  In this sense, IHAL must serve as a specification language such as LISP and as a procedural language such as C.