Deployment of a wireless sensor network in assembly, integration and test activities

This paper evaluates the deployment of a wireless sensor network (WSN) to support and speed-up the assembly, integration and test activities in a satellite project. We focus on the thermal vacuum tests, which come along with an extensive amount of sensors to monitor the thermal behavior of the spacecraft. Recent work revealed a great potential; however, the focus was on passive technologies based on radio frequency identification (RFID), whereas this paper evaluates the deployment of a low-power active WSN based on the recently introduced IEEE 802.15.4e-2012 standard. Possible obstacles are examined and tests in a thermal vacuum chamber are performed to analyze the sensing capability in detail. Finally the results are presented, which demonstrate the functionality with a nearly error-free communication performance.

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