Implementing a wireless base station for a sensor network

Thesis (M. Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 2004.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 68-69).Using wireless sensor networks for monitoring infrastructure is a new trend in civil engineering. Compared with traditional ways to monitor infrastructure, wireless sensor networks are cheap, safe, and compact. However, there are many available wireless communication techniques and hardware for a wireless sensor network. Therefore, it is an important step to choose the best communication method and hardware to construct a wireless sensor network for a particular infrastructure. The London Underground project, which is described in this thesis as a reference case study, demands real-time data transmission, low-power network, and wireless network communication, and also a hardware/software system to collect, archive and display data from the monitoring activity. We consider the trade-offs in choosing 802.1 lb as a communication method. A web service architecture for data visualization is then described. Finally we discuss the appropriate selection of a computer device to serve as the base station.by Heewon Song.M.Eng

Cross-Layer Design to Maintain Earthquake Sensor Network Connectivity After Loss of Infrastructure

We present the design of a cross-layer protocol to maintain connectivity in an earthquake monitoring and early warning sensor network in the absence of communications infrastructure. Such systems, by design, warn of events that severely damage or destroy communications infrastructure. However, the data they provide is of critical importance to emergency and rescue decision making in the immediate aftermath of such events, as is continued early warning of aftershocks, tsunamis, or other subsequent dangers. Utilizing a beyond line-of-sight (BLOS) HF physical layer, we propose an adaptable cross-layer network design that meets these specialized requirements. We are able to provide ultra high connectivity (UHC) early warning on strict time deadlines under worst-case channel conditions along with providing sufficient capacity for continued seismic data collection from a 1000 sensor network.Comment: To be published in MILCOM 2012 - Track 2: Networking Protocols and Performanc

Static and dynamic weighing of rolling stocks by mean of a customized FBG-Sensorized-Patch

The structural health monitoring (SHM) of an infrastructure is of fundamental importance for the structure and people safety. Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG) sensors allow to design for each application, a tailored array of quasi-distributed sensors integrated to the infrastructure. To ensure the structural integrity of the railways is crucial to verify that the infrastructures comply with safety requirements to carry out their task. Railways rolling stock must comply with speed limits, the maximum number of wagons, maximum weight limit distributed on each axis of the wagons and the allowed number of trains on specific routes. The identification of the vertical load acting on each wheel is fundamental for the safety of a rolling-stock moving on a railway line. This paper presents the results of a test campaign on sensitive smart patches for static and dynamic weighing of trains. The system aims to generate a gripping system based on the magnetic force of a plastoferrite patch, taking advantage of the peculiarity that the rails are made of ferritic steel. This solution has the benefit of simplifying and speeding up the installation process and enabling a fast and easy removal or change in the configuration of the sensors array on the rail

Design of Wireless Sensor Nodes for Structural Health Monitoring applications

Enabling low-cost distributed monitoring, wireless sensor networks represents an interesting solution for the implementation of structural health monitoring systems. This work deals with the design of wireless sensor networks for health monitoring of civil structures, specifically focusing on node design in relation to the requirements of different structural monitoring application classes. Design problems are analysed with specific reference to a large-scale experimental setup (the long-term structural monitoring of the Basilica S. Maria di Collemaggio, L’Aquila, Italy). Main limitations emerged are highlighted, and adopted solution strategies are outlined, both in the case of commercial sensing platform and of full custom solutions

Advanced service monitoring configurations with SLA decomposition and selection

Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for Software Services aim to clearly identify the service level commitments established between service requesters and providers. The commitments that are agreed however can be expressed in complex notations through a combination of expressions that need to evaluated and monitored efficiently. The dynamic allocation of the responsibility for monitoring SLAs (and often different parts within them) to different monitoring components is necessary as both SLAs and the components available for monitoring them may change dynamically during the operation of a service based system. In this paper we discuss an approach to supporting this dynamic configuration, and in particular, how SLAs expressed in higher-level notations can be efficiently decomposed and appropriate monitoring components dynamically allocated for each part of the agreements. The approach is illustrated with mechanical support in the form of a configuration service which can be incorporated into SLA-based service monitoring infrastructures

A Survey on Communication Networks for Electric System Automation

Published in Computer Networks 50 (2006) 877–897, an Elsevier journal. The definitive version of this publication is available from Science Direct. Digital Object Identifier:10.1016/j.comnet.2006.01.005In today’s competitive electric utility marketplace, reliable and real-time information become the key factor for reliable delivery of power to the end-users, profitability of the electric utility and customer satisfaction. The operational and commercial demands of electric utilities require a high-performance data communication network that supports both existing functionalities and future operational requirements. In this respect, since such a communication network constitutes the core of the electric system automation applications, the design of a cost-effective and reliable network architecture is crucial. In this paper, the opportunities and challenges of a hybrid network architecture are discussed for electric system automation. More specifically, Internet based Virtual Private Networks, power line communications, satellite communications and wireless communications (wireless sensor networks, WiMAX and wireless mesh networks) are described in detail. The motivation of this paper is to provide a better understanding of the hybrid network architecture that can provide heterogeneous electric system automation application requirements. In this regard, our aim is to present a structured framework for electric utilities who plan to utilize new communication technologies for automation and hence, to make the decision making process more effective and direct.This work was supported by NEETRAC under Project #04-157

An IoT-based solution for monitoring a fleet of educational buildings focusing on energy efficiency

Raising awareness among young people and changing their behaviour and habits concerning energy usage iskey to achieving sustained energy saving. Additionally, young people are very sensitive to environmental protection so raising awareness among children is much easier than with any other group of citizens. This work examinesways to create an innovative Information & Communication Technologies (ICT) ecosystem (including web-based, mobile, social and sensing elements) tailored specifically for school environments, taking into account both theusers (faculty, staff, students, parents) and school buildings, thus motivating and supporting young citizenś behavioural change to achieve greater energy efficiency. A mixture of open-source IoT hardware and proprietary platforms on the infrastructure level, are currently being utilized for monitoring a fleet of 18 educational buildings across 3 countries, comprising over 700 IoT monitoring points. Hereon presented is the system's high-level architecture, as well as several aspects of its implementation, related to the application domain of educational building monitoring and energy efficiency. The system is developed based on open-source technologies andservices in order to make it capable of providing open IT-infrastructure and support from different commercial hardware/sensor vendors as well as open-source solutions. The system presented can be used to develop and offer newapp-based solutions that can be used either for educational purposes or for managing the energy efficiency ofthebuilding. The system is replicable and adaptable to settings that may be different than the scenarios envisionedhere (e.g., targeting different climate zones), different IT infrastructures and can be easily extended to accommodate integration with other systems. The overall performance of the system is evaluated in real-world environment in terms of scalability, responsiveness and simplicity

A Survey on IT-Techniques for a Dynamic Emergency Management in Large Infrastructures

This deliverable is a survey on the IT techniques that are relevant to the three use cases of the project EMILI. It describes the state-of-the-art in four complementary IT areas: Data cleansing, supervisory control and data acquisition, wireless sensor networks and complex event processing. Even though the deliverable’s authors have tried to avoid a too technical language and have tried to explain every concept referred to, the deliverable might seem rather technical to readers so far little familiar with the techniques it describes