Characterization of Wireless Smart Sensor Performance
Publication: Journal of Engineering Mechanics
Volume 136, Issue 12
Abstract
A critical aspect of using wireless sensors for structural health monitoring is communication performance. Unlike wired systems, data transfer is less reliable between wireless sensor nodes owing to data loss. While reliable communication protocols are typically used to reduce data loss, this increase in communication can drain already limited power resources. This paper provides an experimental investigation of the wireless communication characteristics of the Imote2 smart sensor platform; the presentation is tailored toward the end user, e.g., application engineers and researchers. Following a qualitative discussion of wireless communication and packet delivery, a quantitative characterization of wireless communication capabilities of the Imote2 platform, including an assessment of onboard and external antenna performance, is provided. Herein, the external antenna was found to significantly outperform the onboard antenna in both transmission and reception reliability. However, the built environment, including building materials and other wireless networks, can significantly reduce reception rate and thus increase packet loss. Finally, implications of these results for a full-scale implementation are presented.
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Acknowledgments
The writers gratefully acknowledge the support of this research by the National Science Foundation, under Grant No. NSF0600433 (Dr. S.C. Liu, program manager) and the use of the anechoic testbed supported by NSF Grant No. NSFCNS 04-23431. The writers would like to thank Kirill Mechitov for his invaluable knowledge of the Imote2 and development of TestRadio.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Engineering Mechanics
Volume 136 • Issue 12 • December 2010
Pages: 1435 - 1443
Copyright
© 2010 ASCE.
History
Received: Dec 29, 2008
Accepted: Apr 26, 2010
Published online: Apr 29, 2010
Published in print: Dec 2010
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