RAISE: RAIlway Infrastructure Health Monitoring Using Wireless SEnsor Networks

Wireless Sensor Networks are composed of devices of reduced size, self-powered and with wireless transmission capabilities. Because of these features this technology has been recognised as promising for a large variety of monitoring and surveillance applications. Moreover, WSNs have been identified as having the potential to become an integral part of the protection of critical infrastructures (CIP). In this paper we present the details of an application that makes use of WSNs to monitor railway infrastructures. The WSN collects information about the structural health and behavior of the infrastructure when a train travels along it and relays the readings to a base station. The base station uses the next train(s) as a data mule to upload the information. The information is then processed on the train which does not have the limitations of a sensor node. The use of a train as a data mule is especially suitable to collect information from remote or inaccessible places which do not have a direct connection to the internet. The application has been built using a publish/subscribe middleware called PS-QUASAR over Tmote sky nodes. The results of the simulation using the Cooja simulator are presented in this paper and confirm the feasibility of the application.

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