WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORK FOR AIRCRAFT HEALTH

MONITORING

ABSTRACT:

Wireless Sensor networks is an emerging paradigm of computing and networking where

a node may be self powered, and have sensing, computing, and communication
capabilities. They have been proposed for use in a wide variety of applications. The
objective of this article is to describe a wireless sensor network for monitoring the health
of aircraft engines. We describe the architecture of the wireless sensor network along with
how it fits into the general area of wireless sensor networks.

INTRODUCTION:

Modern physical systems, such as those used in aircrafts, are becoming more and more
complex. This increase in system complexity has led to an increased desire for automated
prognostic and health monitoring systems.
One particular aircraft system in which prognosis and health monitoring capability is
becoming increasingly desirable is aircraft engine system. To provide such capabilities,
however, a number of sensors of varying types may be mounted on the engine, or inside
the engine, to sense various physical parameters (such as, operation temperature, oil
temperature, vibration, pressure, etc.) associated with engine operation. Using a network
of sensors, these physical parameters can be transmitted to a central processing unit using
wiring and multiple wiring harnesses for further prognostic analysis, or engine health
prediction. These wiring and wiring harnesses can –
 Increase overall system weight and cost.
 Reduce overall system reliability.
Therefore, there is a need for a system and a method of providing various aircraft engine
parameters without using wiring and multiple wiring harnesses.
As a design example of wireless sensor networks, in this article, we describe how the
concept has addressed these needs of engine health monitoring applications. The rest of
the paper describes the architecture of a wireless sensor network for monitoring of
aircraft engine health and its single chip solution.

SYSTEM INTEGRATION:

An aircraft engine wireless sensor network includes –

 A number of wireless sensor communication nodes
 A central engine control unit (i.e., engine controller) in operable communication
with each other.

Each wireless sensor communication node can communicate directly with the engine
controller, or through one or more other wireless sensor communication nodes in the
network. A detailed description of each subsystem and the integration of subsystems are
presented below. The functional block diagram of a wireless sensor communication node
is shown in the figure, where a wireless sensor communication node includes three main
sections-
 a sensor section
 a communication control section
 A power supply section.

A functional diagram of wireless sensor communication node

SENSOR AND DATA COLLECTION:

The sensor section includes –

  One or more sensors (e.g., temperature sensors, pressure sensors, vibration
sensors, proximity sensors, and position sensors, etc.)
 Appropriate signal conditioning circuitry.

The signal conditioning circuitry receives the sensor signal from the sensor and
conditions the sensor signal, as appropriate, for further processing in the communication
section. The signal conditioning circuitry may or may not be used in
The system. The appropriate signal conditioning may also be implemented in the
communication section.

COMMUNICATION AND CONTROL:

The figure shows a block diagram of the communication control section, which
includes –
 a communication controller
 a single-chip radio transceiver.

A functional diagram of communication control

The single-chip radio transceiver, is implemented using-

 BFSK(Binary Phase Shift Key) modulation
 Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum (FHSS) multiple access.
As shown in the figure, the single-chip radio transceiver consists of –
 A digital data interface.
 A frequency synthesizer.
 A transmitter (TX).
 A receiver (Rx).

The block diagram of single-chip radio transceiver

The microprocessor and programmable logic in the communication protocol stack

implement various communication control functions, which are represented as protocol
modules and stored in memory. These communication protocol modules include –
 Power aware routing module
 A node positioning module
 A network membership module
 A low power media access module
POWER AWARE ROUTING MODULE:

The functionality of the power aware routing module is illustrated in the figure, which
depicts a sensor communication network having eight nodes that include seven
wireless sensor nodes 200(i.e., 200-1 through 200-7), and the engine central control
unit 100.
As the figure illustrates, each wireless sensor node transmits its own power capability
data to, and receives power capability data from, one or more other sensor nodes. Based
on the power capability data each wireless sensor node receives, it determines the
optimum data transmission route through the wireless sensor communication network.
In particular, the power aware routing module determines a data transmission route that
preferably routes the data to its intended destination via other wireless sensor nodes that
have the greatest power capability.
In the example shown in the figure, it was determined that sensor data from wireless
sensor node 200-1 should be routed to the engine central control unit 100 via wireless
sensor nodes 200-2, 200-4, 200-5, and 200-7.The power aware routing module may be
implemented with-
 Ad-hoc On-demand Distance Vector routing (AODV)
 Dynamic Source Routing (DSR)
 Global State Routing (GSR).

The power aware routing module, when used with these other schemes, provides an
added level of enhancement to these other routing schemes.
 The illustration of power aware routing example

NODE POSITIONING MODULE:

It is desirable that each wireless sensor node, in addition to transmitting sensor data and
power capability data, also transmits data representative of its position. This position data
could be the physical location of the region or device where the parameter is being
sensed. If the sensor is located in a fixed position, then this position data will likely be a
constant. If, however, the wireless sensor is located such that its position may change,
then the position data will also change. In this latter case, a sensor with positioning
capability (e.g., positioning by variation of magnetic strength) should be used to generate
and update the position data that it transmits. Similar to the power capability data, each
wireless sensor node in the network transmits its position data to, and receives position
data from, some or all of the other wireless sensor nodes. Moreover, the position data is
preferably transmitted simultaneously with the sensor data and the power capability data.
The position data allows a receiving node, be it a sensor node or the engine central
control unit, to determine where the sensor data came from.
NETWORK MEMBERSHIP MODULE:

The network membership module provides identification and authentication

functionalities for each wireless sensor node. The network membership module-

 Supplies identification data that uniquely identifies each wireless sensor node in
the network.
 Uses the received identification data to determine if the wireless sensor node that
transmitted the identification data is a member of the network
 Determines the number of wireless sensor nodes that are presently active in the
network
 Determines when a wireless sensor node joins and leaves the network.
 Performs an authentication function.
Specifically, when a wireless sensor node receives data from another wireless sensor
node, the network membership module can parse the data received to determine whether
the received data was transmitted from a node that is presently a member of the network,
or can be allowed membership within the network.

MEDIA ACCESS MODULE:

The low-power media access module may implement a media access schedule that is
similar to Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA), rather than the conventional random
access. In other words, each wireless sensor node is assigned a given access time to the
network. During its access time, a wireless sensor node may attempt to gain access to the
transmission medium either one or multiple times as needed. If access fails after a
predetermined number of times, the node may place itself in sleep mode. By providing
access to the transmission medium in accordance with an access schedule, the wireless
sensor node will likely use less power as compared to a configuration in which random
access to the transmission medium is attempted. The low-power media access module is
also configured such that the wireless sensor node will place itself in sleep mode
whenever it is neither sending nor receiving data. This functionality can provide
significant power savings.

POWER SUPPLY:

The power supply section is to supply electrical power to –

 sensor section
 Communication control section.

The power supply may be any one of numerous types of stand-alone electrical power
supplies.
For example, the power supply may include one or more batteries and appropriate signal
conditioning circuitry or it may be a thermoelectric power supply that is driven by
temperature gradients on the engine. It also could be a vibration-powered generator that is
driven by engine vibration and converts mechanical power to electrical power. These
power scavenging mechanisms can be implemented using Micro Electro Mechanical
System
(MEMS) technology to make the size of a node as small as possible.

SINGLE CHIP SOLUTION:

The communication control section of a wireless sensor node is implemented as two

physically separate parts. However, the communication controller and transceiver can be
implemented in a single integrated circuit chip. Particularly, such an integrated circuit
chip is implemented with Silicon on Insulator (SOI) technology, which will allow the
integrated circuit chip to operate in an environment (such as aircraft engine) with up to
250C temperature. SOI is a semiconductor fabrication technique developed by IBM
that uses pure crystal silicon and silicon oxide for integrated circuits (ICs) and
microchips. A schematic of the SOI-based single chip solution is shown in the figure.
 The single-chip solution

CONCLUSIONS:

Wireless sensor networks are an emerging research area with application in many fields.
In this paper, we have described in detail the architecture of a wireless sensor network
which can be used to monitor the health of aircraft engines. The wireless sensor network
is being fabricated for real world testing. Future extension of this work consists of
performance evaluation of the wireless sensor network and field tests for monitoring of
engine health.

REFERENCES:

[1] “Wireless Home Networking For Dummies” by Danny Briere

[2] “Wireless communication and Networks” by William Stallings

Submitted By-
SARANYA.M
VELAMMAL ENGINEERING COLLEGE
CHENNAI

E-MAIL ID: