Wireless monitoring concept for logistic systems

Transportation systems have emerged into a critical underlying structure, heavily sustaining all industrial sectors. Along them, monitoring systems were developed in order to increase the quality of the provided services. The research areas in this field have split in two directions: monitoring systems for tracking the products from delivery source to final destination, including temporary storage information along the transportation path and monitoring systems designed to provide environment information during transportation. For some type of products (e.g. food) the quality of the product is highly dependent on the quality of the transportation conditions. This paper describes a monitoring concept based on a wireless sensors network used for environment characterization and product storage during transportation. Wireless sensor networks are highly feasible for this type of applications in terms of performance and ease of use, but in the same time they bring a set of design challenges like autonomy, information security, data throughput and resistance to harsh environmental operating conditions.