Wireless communication, identification and sensing technologies enabling integrated logistics: a study in the harbor environment

In the last decade, integrated logistics has become an important challenge in the development of wireless communication, identification and sensing technology, due to the growing complexity of logistics processes and the increasing demand for adapting systems to new requirements. The advancement of wireless technology provides a wide range of options for the maritime container terminals. Electronic devices employed in container terminals reduce the manual effort, facilitating timely information flow and enhancing control and quality of service and decision made. In this paper, we examine the technology that can be used to support integration in harbor's logistics. In the literature, most systems have been developed to address specific needs of particular harbors, but a systematic study is missing. The purpose is to provide an overview to the reader about which technology of integrated logistics can be implemented and what remains to be addressed in the future

Design of a wireless passive sensing system for impact detection of aerospace composite structures

In this paper, the design and implementation of a novel on-board wireless passive sensing system for impact detection of composite airframe is presented for the first time. Several modules, including filtering, impact detection, local processing and wireless transmission are designed and evaluated for detecting rare, random and transitory impact events. An event-triggered mechanism with high responsiveness is adopted to reduce the system power dissipation and to maintain the detection effectiveness. This design allows the system to be adaptive, energy-efficient and highly responsive to impacts. The whole system was implemented in an experimental study, and the effectiveness was evaluated and illustrated. The system was woken up by impact events in around 12 µs, and the impact data were recorded at 200 kHz (up to 5.33 MHz). This work provides a guideline for low-power, high-responsiveness passive on-board sensing system design. This system can also be adapted to other sensing applications in aerospace engineering

Wireless Technologies for Industry 4.0 Applications

Wireless technologies are increasingly used in industrial applications. These technologies reduce cabling, which is costly and troublesome, and introduce several benefits for their application in terms of flexibility to modify the layout of the nodes and scaling of the number of connected devices. They may also introduce new functionalities since they ease the connections to mobile devices or parts. Although they have some drawbacks, they are increasingly accepted in industrial applications, especially for monitoring and supervision tasks. Recently, they are starting to be accepted even for time-critical tasks, for example, in closed-loop control systems involving slow dynamic processes. However, wireless technologies have been evolving very quickly during the last few years, since several relevant technologies are available in the market. For this reason, it may become difficult to select the best alternative. This perspective article intends to guide application designers to choose the most appropriate technology in each case. For this purpose, this article discusses the most relevant wireless technologies in the industry and shows different examples of applications

Review. Monitoring the intermodal, refrigerated transport of fruit using sensor networks

Most of the fruit in Europe is transported by road, but the saturation of the major arteries, the increased demand for freight transport, and environmental concerns all indicate there is a need to change this means of transport. A combination of transport modes using universal containers is one of the solutions proposed: this is known as intermodal transport. Tracking the transport of fruit in reefer containers along the supply chain is the means by which product quality can be guaranteed. The integration of emerging information technologies can now provide real-time status updates. This paper reviews the literature and the latest technologies in this area as part of a national project. Particular emphasis is placed on multiplexed digital communication technologies and wireless sensor networks

Energy Harvesting Technologies for Achieving Self-Powered Wireless Sensor Networks in Machine Condition Monitoring:A Review

Condition monitoring can reduce machine breakdown losses, increase productivity and operation safety, and therefore deliver significant benefits to many industries. The emergence of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) with smart processing ability play an ever-growing role in online condition monitoring of machines. WSNs are cost-effective networking systems for machine condition monitoring. It avoids cable usage and eases system deployment in industry, which leads to significant savings. Powering the nodes is one of the major challenges for a true WSN system, especially when positioned at inaccessible or dangerous locations and in harsh environments. Promising energy harvesting technologies have attracted the attention of engineers because they convert microwatt or milliwatt level power from the environment to implement maintenance-free machine condition monitoring systems with WSNs. The motivation of this review is to investigate the energy sources, stimulate the application of energy harvesting based WSNs, and evaluate the improvement of energy harvesting systems for mechanical condition monitoring. This paper overviews the principles of a number of energy harvesting technologies applicable to industrial machines by investigating the power consumption of WSNs and the potential energy sources in mechanical systems. Many models or prototypes with different features are reviewed, especially in the mechanical field. Energy harvesting technologies are evaluated for further development according to the comparison of their advantages and disadvantages. Finally, a discussion of the challenges and potential future research of energy harvesting systems powering WSNs for machine condition monitoring is made

Design and evaluation of a custom ZigBee platform

Wireless sensor networks o er signi cant advantages over wired solutions, including savings in installation and maintenance costs. The ZigBee stack speci es additional application and networking layers to be used with the IEEE 802.15.4 low-rate wireless personal area network standard. A custom hardware and software platform is detailed, and measurements are performed to characterise the platform. Packet Error Rate (PER) measurements for both a star network and a multi-hop network show that the PER increases as the number of devices simultaneously transmitting increases. The maximum goodput (data payload bits transmitted over time) attained is 37 kb/s. Latency measurements show an increase in microcontroller clock speed will reduce message generation and deconstruction processing time. Device lifetime estimations show the signi cant e ect of the chosen regulator's quiescent current, reducing device lifetime when using a 9 V, 500 mAh battery from 49 days to 8 days when excluding regulator current. Valid sensor results require monitoring the device power supply, as a failing power supply in uences sensor measurements whilst successful radio transmission is still possible. Devices lasted up to 71 % of the predicted lifetime

Towards the Internet of Smart Trains: A Review on Industrial IoT-Connected Railways

[Abstract] Nowadays, the railway industry is in a position where it is able to exploit the opportunities created by the IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things) and enabling communication technologies under the paradigm of Internet of Trains. This review details the evolution of communication technologies since the deployment of GSM-R, describing the main alternatives and how railway requirements, specifications and recommendations have evolved over time. The advantages of the latest generation of broadband communication systems (e.g., LTE, 5G, IEEE 802.11ad) and the emergence of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) for the railway environment are also explained together with the strategic roadmap to ensure a smooth migration from GSM-R. Furthermore, this survey focuses on providing a holistic approach, identifying scenarios and architectures where railways could leverage better commercial IIoT capabilities. After reviewing the main industrial developments, short and medium-term IIoT-enabled services for smart railways are evaluated. Then, it is analyzed the latest research on predictive maintenance, smart infrastructure, advanced monitoring of assets, video surveillance systems, railway operations, Passenger and Freight Information Systems (PIS/FIS), train control systems, safety assurance, signaling systems, cyber security and energy efficiency. Overall, it can be stated that the aim of this article is to provide a detailed examination of the state-of-the-art of different technologies and services that will revolutionize the railway industry and will allow for confronting today challenges.Galicia. Consellería de Cultura, Educación e Ordenación Universitaria; ED431C 2016-045Galicia. Consellería de Cultura, Educación e Ordenación Universitaria; ED341D R2016/012Galicia. Consellería de Cultura, Educación e Ordenación Universitaria; ED431G/01Agencia Estatal de Investigación (España); TEC2013-47141-C4-1-RAgencia Estatal de Investigación (España); TEC2015-69648-REDCAgencia Estatal de Investigación (España); TEC2016-75067-C4-1-

Middleware and communication technologies for structural health monitoring of critical infrastructures: a survey

Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) has become a priority for every country around the world with the aim of reducing vulnerabilities and improving protection of Critical Infrastructures (CI) against terrorist attacks or natural disasters, among other threats. As part of CIP, Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) is defined as the process of gathering basic information that allows detecting, locating and quantifying vulnerabilities early on (fatigue cracking, degradation of boundary conditions, etc.) thereby improving, the resilience of the CI. Recent advances in electronics, wireless communication and software are expected to open the door to a new era of densely connected devices sharing information worldwide, known as the Internet of Things (IoT), in which Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) play an important role. The combined use of IoT/WSNs together with industrial sensors in SHM provide an ad-hoc, inexpensive and easy way of deploying a monitoring system, where data can be shared among different entities. SHM requirements are challenging and diverse and therefore several different technologies may be used in the same deployment. At the same time the use of a middleware can substantially simplify and speed up the development of applications for SHM. Taking into account the challenges of SHM systems, this paper provides a review of the most novel and relevant wireless technologies and a state-of-the-art middleware for WSNs focusing on SHM specific requirements