A critical analysis of research potential, challenges and future directives in industrial wireless sensor networks

In recent years, Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks (IWSNs) have emerged as an important research theme with applications spanning a wide range of industries including automation, monitoring, process control, feedback systems and automotive. Wide scope of IWSNs applications ranging from small production units, large oil and gas industries to nuclear fission control, enables a fast-paced research in this field. Though IWSNs offer advantages of low cost, flexibility, scalability, self-healing, easy deployment and reformation, yet they pose certain limitations on available potential and introduce challenges on multiple fronts due to their susceptibility to highly complex and uncertain industrial environments. In this paper a detailed discussion on design objectives, challenges and solutions, for IWSNs, are presented. A careful evaluation of industrial systems, deadlines and possible hazards in industrial atmosphere are discussed. The paper also presents a thorough review of the existing standards and industrial protocols and gives a critical evaluation of potential of these standards and protocols along with a detailed discussion on available hardware platforms, specific industrial energy harvesting techniques and their capabilities. The paper lists main service providers for IWSNs solutions and gives insight of future trends and research gaps in the field of IWSNs

On Simultaneous Localization and Mapping inside the Human Body (Body-SLAM)

Wireless capsule endoscopy (WCE) offers a patient-friendly, non-invasive and painless investigation of the entire small intestine, where other conventional wired endoscopic instruments can barely reach. As a critical component of the capsule endoscopic examination, physicians need to know the precise position of the endoscopic capsule in order to identify the position of intestinal disease after it is detected by the video source. To define the position of the endoscopic capsule, we need to have a map of inside the human body. However, since the shape of the small intestine is extremely complex and the RF signal propagates differently in the non-homogeneous body tissues, accurate mapping and localization inside small intestine is very challenging. In this dissertation, we present an in-body simultaneous localization and mapping technique (Body-SLAM) to enhance the positioning accuracy of the WCE inside the small intestine and reconstruct the trajectory the capsule has traveled. In this way, the positions of the intestinal diseases can be accurately located on the map of inside human body, therefore, facilitates the following up therapeutic operations. The proposed approach takes advantage of data fusion from two sources that come with the WCE: image sequences captured by the WCE\u27s embedded camera and the RF signal emitted by the capsule. This approach estimates the speed and orientation of the endoscopic capsule by analyzing displacements of feature points between consecutive images. Then, it integrates this motion information with the RF measurements by employing a Kalman filter to smooth the localization results and generate the route that the WCE has traveled. The performance of the proposed motion tracking algorithm is validated using empirical data from the patients and this motion model is later imported into a virtual testbed to test the performance of the alternative Body-SLAM algorithms. Experimental results show that the proposed Body-SLAM technique is able to provide accurate tracking of the WCE with average error of less than 2.3cm

Quantifying Potential Energy Efficiency Gain in Green Cellular Wireless Networks

Conventional cellular wireless networks were designed with the purpose of providing high throughput for the user and high capacity for the service provider, without any provisions of energy efficiency. As a result, these networks have an enormous Carbon footprint. In this paper, we describe the sources of the inefficiencies in such networks. First we present results of the studies on how much Carbon footprint such networks generate. We also discuss how much more mobile traffic is expected to increase so that this Carbon footprint will even increase tremendously more. We then discuss specific sources of inefficiency and potential sources of improvement at the physical layer as well as at higher layers of the communication protocol hierarchy. In particular, considering that most of the energy inefficiency in cellular wireless networks is at the base stations, we discuss multi-tier networks and point to the potential of exploiting mobility patterns in order to use base station energy judiciously. We then investigate potential methods to reduce this inefficiency and quantify their individual contributions. By a consideration of the combination of all potential gains, we conclude that an improvement in energy consumption in cellular wireless networks by two orders of magnitude, or even more, is possible.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1210.843

Small unmanned airborne systems to support oil and gas pipeline monitoring and mapping

Acknowledgments We thank Johan Havelaar, Aeryon Labs Inc., AeronVironment Inc. and Aeronautics Inc. for kindly permitting the use of materials in Fig. 1.Peer reviewedPublisher PD