Performance testing of a low power consumption wireless sensor communication system integrated with an energy harvesting power source

This paper presents the performance testing results of a wireless sensor communication system with low power consumption integrated with a vibration energy harvesting power source. The experiments focus on the system’s capability to perform continuous monitoring and to wirelessly transmit the data acquired from the sensors to a user base station, completely battery-free. Energy harvesting technologies together with system design optimisation for power consumption minimisation ensure the system’s energy autonomous capability demonstrated in this paper by presenting the promising testing results achieved following its integration with Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) and Body Area Network (BAN) applications

Water Pipeline Leakage Detection Based on Machine Learning and Wireless Sensor Networks

The detection of water pipeline leakage is important to ensure that water supply networks can operate safely and conserve water resources. To address the lack of intelligent and the low efficiency of conventional leakage detection methods, this paper designs a leakage detection method based on machine learning and wireless sensor networks (WSNs). The system employs wireless sensors installed on pipelines to collect data and utilizes the 4G network to perform remote data transmission. A leakage triggered networking method is proposed to reduce the wireless sensor network’s energy consumption and prolong the system life cycle effectively. To enhance the precision and intelligence of leakage detection, we propose a leakage identification method that employs the intrinsic mode function, approximate entropy, and principal component analysis to construct a signal feature set and that uses a support vector machine (SVM) as a classifier to perform leakage detection. Simulation analysis and experimental results indicate that the proposed leakage identification method can effectively identify the water pipeline leakage and has lower energy consumption than the networking methods used in conventional wireless sensor networks

Design of a Wireless Sensor Node for Vibration Monitoring of Industrial Machinery

Machine healthy monitoring is a type of maintenance inspection technique by which an operational asset is monitored and the data obtained is analysed to detect signs of degradation, diagnose the causes of faults and thus reducing the maintenance costs. Vibration signals analysis was extensively used for machines fault detection and diagnosis in various industrial applications, as it respond immediately to manifest itself if any change is appeared in the monitored machine. However, recent developments in electronics and computing have opened new horizons in the area of condition monitoring and have shown their practicality in fault detection and diagnosis processes. The main aim of using wireless embedded systems is to allow data analysis to be carried out locally at field level and transmitting the results wirelessly to the base station, which as a result will help to overcome the need for wiring and provides an easy and cost-effective sensing technique to detect faults in machines. So, the main focuses of this research is to design and develop an online condition monitoring system based on wireless embedded technology that can be used to detect and diagnose the most common faults in the transmission systems (gears and bearings) of an industrial robot joints using vibration signal analysis

Internet of Things-aided Smart Grid: Technologies, Architectures, Applications, Prototypes, and Future Research Directions

Traditional power grids are being transformed into Smart Grids (SGs) to address the issues in existing power system due to uni-directional information flow, energy wastage, growing energy demand, reliability and security. SGs offer bi-directional energy flow between service providers and consumers, involving power generation, transmission, distribution and utilization systems. SGs employ various devices for the monitoring, analysis and control of the grid, deployed at power plants, distribution centers and in consumers' premises in a very large number. Hence, an SG requires connectivity, automation and the tracking of such devices. This is achieved with the help of Internet of Things (IoT). IoT helps SG systems to support various network functions throughout the generation, transmission, distribution and consumption of energy by incorporating IoT devices (such as sensors, actuators and smart meters), as well as by providing the connectivity, automation and tracking for such devices. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive survey on IoT-aided SG systems, which includes the existing architectures, applications and prototypes of IoT-aided SG systems. This survey also highlights the open issues, challenges and future research directions for IoT-aided SG systems

Wireless Fault Detection System for an Industrial Robot Based on Statistical Control Chart

Industrial robots are now commonly used in production systems to improve productivity, quality and safety in manufacturing processes. Recent developments involve using robots cooperatively with production line operatives. Regardless of application, there are significant implications for operator safety in the event of a robot malfunction or failure, and the consequent downtime has a significant impact on productivity in manufacturing. Machine healthy monitoring is a type of maintenance inspection technique by which an operational asset is monitored and the data obtained is analysed to detect signs of degradation and thus reducing the maintenance costs. Developments in electronics and computing have opened new horizons in the area of condition monitoring. The aim of using wireless electronic systems is to allow data analysis to be carried out locally at field level and transmitting the results wirelessly to the base station, which as a result will help to overcome the need for wiring and provides an easy and cost-effective sensing technique to detect faults in machines. So, the main focuses of this research is to develop an online and wireless fault detection system for an industrial robot based on statistical control chart approach. An experimental investigation was accomplished using the PUMA 560 robot and vibration signal capturing was adopted, as it responds immediately to manifest itself if any change is appeared in the monitored machine, to extract features related to the robot health conditions. The results indicate the successful detection of faults at the early stages using the key extracted parameters

EC-CENTRIC: An Energy- and Context-Centric Perspective on IoT Systems and Protocol Design

The radio transceiver of an IoT device is often where most of the energy is consumed. For this reason, most research so far has focused on low power circuit and energy efficient physical layer designs, with the goal of reducing the average energy per information bit required for communication. While these efforts are valuable per se, their actual effectiveness can be partially neutralized by ill-designed network, processing and resource management solutions, which can become a primary factor of performance degradation, in terms of throughput, responsiveness and energy efficiency. The objective of this paper is to describe an energy-centric and context-aware optimization framework that accounts for the energy impact of the fundamental functionalities of an IoT system and that proceeds along three main technical thrusts: 1) balancing signal-dependent processing techniques (compression and feature extraction) and communication tasks; 2) jointly designing channel access and routing protocols to maximize the network lifetime; 3) providing self-adaptability to different operating conditions through the adoption of suitable learning architectures and of flexible/reconfigurable algorithms and protocols. After discussing this framework, we present some preliminary results that validate the effectiveness of our proposed line of action, and show how the use of adaptive signal processing and channel access techniques allows an IoT network to dynamically tune lifetime for signal distortion, according to the requirements dictated by the application

Smart FRP Composite Sandwich Bridge Decks in Cold Regions

INE/AUTC 12.0