Abstract
Wireless sensor networks are being considered for use in industrial process and control environments. Unlike traditional deployment scenarios for sensor networks, in which energy preservation is the main design principle, industrial environments stress worker safety and uninterrupted production. To fulfill these requirements, sensor networks must be able to provide performance guarantees for radio communication. In this paper, we consider as a case study the deployment of a sensornet in an oil refinery in Portugal, where sensor nodes are deployed outdoors and might experience high temperature fluctuations. We investigate how the variations of ambient temperature influence data delivery performance and link quality in low-power radio communications. We also study the impact that specific implementation requirements, such as the ATEX fire-safety regulations, can have on the design of the overall network. Our experiments show that temperature directly affects the communication between sensor nodes, and that significantly less transmission power is required at low temperatures. We further illustrate that it is possible to save up to 16% energy during nights and cold periods of the year, while still ensuring reliable communication among sensor nodes. In view of these experimental results, we elaborate on how the temperature influences both the design and the deployment of wireless sensor networks in industrial environments.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 5345684 |
| Journal | IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics |
| Volume | 6 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| Pages (from-to) | 451-459 |
| Number of pages | 9 |
| ISSN | 1551-3203 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 01.08.2010 |
Funding
Manuscript received May 31, 2009; revised September 11, 2009; accepted October 14, 2009. Date of publication December 04, 2009; date of current version August 06, 2010. This work was supported in part by the European Commission under FP7 with Contract FP7-ICT-224282 (GINSENG) and Contract FP7-2007-2-224053 (CONET, the Cooperating Objects Network of Excellence), in part by SSF and VINNOVA, the Swedish Agency for Innovation Systems, and in part by the Cluster of Excellence 306/1 “Inflammation at Interfaces” (Excellence Initiative, Germany, since 2006). Paper no. TII-09-05-0090. He is a Senior Researcher in the Department of Computing, Lancaster University, currently employed on the EU FP7 GINSENG project. Since completing his undergraduate degree, he has worked on a number of research projects, including the industrially funded IPV6 Testbed and the EPSRC funded NEMO project. His current research interest is in wireless networking for embedded devices.
