Energy efficient wireless sensor network architecture for aircraft Structure Health Monitoring: From sensor to data collect

Aerospace testing and monitoring systems are based nowadays on point-to-point wiring, which results in heavy cables, difficult installation and maintenance and a limited number of sensors. Switching to wireless communication will allow to respond to these constraints but will create new challenges due to transfer reliability requirements, high data rate and energy constraints. In this context, there is a strong need for energy efficient wireless sensor communications as each node is powered from a battery or from energy harvesting. This paper describes a wireless communications architecture tailored for this purpose, based on a low power Impulse Radio Ultra Wide Band (IR-UWB) physical layer and an energy efficient TDMA MAC layer. The whole measurement system for aircraft Structure Health Monitoring was implemented and tested on a G500 aircraft mock-up with good results. The complete system architecture from sensors to data collect is presented.