Wireless Sensor Networks : Application Roll Call

Wireless sensor network technologies provide a bridge between

information systems and the physical world. While cost effective sensors
and actuators have been available for decades, connecting, installing and
commissioning these sensors and actuators has been expensive due to the
cost of wiring. Computing power, memory and sensors are all showing
the exponential decrease in cost, size and power associated with Moores
Law. The costs involved in installing and commissioning sensors are by
comparison increasing.

With the introduction of reliable wireless sensor technology the costs of

installing and commissioning such devices can be up to 90% less than a
wired alternative.

The use of sensors is very widespread and therefore opportunities have

been identified in many areas of industry and commerce. The problem
facing anyone looking into these technologies today is trying to decide
what represents technology and products actually in use rather than the
claims of vendors or the forecasts of market researchers.

What this article sets out to do is illustrate real applications in specific

sectors and describe some of the benefits that are already being achieved.

What is a wireless sensor network ?

A wireless sensor network (WSN) is a wireless network consisting of

distributed autonomous devices using sensors to cooperatively monitor
physical or environmental conditions, such as temperature, sound,
vibration, pressure, motion or pollutants, at different locations.

In addition to one or more sensors, each node in a sensor network is

typically equipped with a radio transceiver or other wireless
communications device, a small microcontroller, and an energy source,
usually a battery.

A sensor network normally constitutes a wireless ad-hoc (mesh) network,

meaning that each sensor supports a multi-hop routing algorithm ( data
may travel along various paths through the network to its desired
destination).The applications for WSNs are many and varied. They are
used in commercial and industrial applications to monitor data that would
be difficult or expensive to monitor using wired sensors. They could be
deployed in wilderness areas, where they would remain for many years
(monitoring some environmental variables) without the need to
recharge/replace their power supplies. They could form a perimeter about
a property and monitor the progression of intruders (passing information
from one node to the next).

Limitations of wired and existing wireless solutions

Studies show that up to 90% of actionable process and environmental

data remains uncollected. Wired monitoring systems are expensive and
unrealistic in challenging physical environments, and manual monitoring
has proven simply to be cost-prohibitive.

There a number of traditional wireless solutions which fall in to the

category of point-to-point or point-to-multipoint. The reliability of these
networks is set by the quality of the radio link between the central access
point and each endpoint. In industrial settings it can be hard to find a
location for an access point that provides dependable communications
with each endpoint. Moving an access point to improve communications
with one endpoint will often degrade communications with other
endpoints.

Benefits of WSN

Wireless mesh sensors networks communicate with each other through

routers and a gateway to form a mesh network. Router devices relay
signals for each other, so if a given sensor is out of range of the gateway,
other members of the network carry data. Since interference patterns can
change, the network will automatically adapt to keep all members
communicating. This self-healing capability keeps data flowing with up
to 100% reliability.

WSNs generally use spread spectrum communications because it delivers

the very highest level of data transmission reliability. Frequency hopping,
spread spectrum eliminates the effects of interference by “spreading” the
transmission over a range of frequencies and randomly “hopping” from
one frequency to another. If a transmission is blocked on one channel it
moves to a clear channel and retries.

.
A self-configuring, self-healing network offers tremendous advantages,
particularly in companies with changing requirements, the need to
relocate sensors at will or that have an environment with moveable
production equipment. In the event a node becomes overloaded or
unavailable, a mesh network will automatically reroute the traffic to its
destination without outside intervention. The goal should be to spend
more time collecting information, not setting up and managing the
network.

Many monitoring products are single application systems that specialise

in one particular measurement, such as food storage temperature or
humidity monitoring. The reality, is that most companies have multiple
monitoring requirements. Investing in multiple systems can be costly and
make it difficult to get a comprehensive “dashboard view” of the
operation. A flexible wireless mesh sensor network supports multiple
applications on the same infrastructure and provides more valuable,
comprehensive results.

Scaled architecture enables a small network to expand without changes to

the underlying infrastructure. Given the wide range of data that can be
collected, this is a smart investment in anticipation of future
requirements. A scalable architecture that allows additional sensors to be
added easily, without significant advance planning or technical
reconfiguration, is most valuable and should be able to increase in scale
to thousands of points as the technology develops. Today, networks of
hundreds of monitored points are becoming common.

An effective wireless sensor network solution must offer extensive

facilities for connecting to external systems and third-party software
packages already in use. Using industry standard protocols such as
Modbus and OPC and Web 2.0 connectivity through XML, SOAP, and
ODBC ensures seamless and flexible connectivity with all SCADA
systems and business applications.

Collecting the data solves only part of the problem; making sense of it is
where the real payoff happens. Ideally, data should flow through the
network gateway into a console that can display real-time information,
historical data and facilitate certain administrative tasks.

Water industry

One of the major area of applications for sensor networks is the

monitoring and management of scarce water resources.

One application using solar powered sensor nodes measures

environmental variables such as temperature, soil moisture, water
quality, humidity and solar energy levels. Charged by miniature solar
panels, these sensor nodes can exchange data to deliver it back to a
central database for analysis.

This network is used to advise local sugar cane farmers of the point at
which water becomes too saline to use for irrigation, thus saving water,
time, money and crops.

Environmental monitoring

In a recent project a team of researchers have used a network of wireless

sensors to monitor various features of glaciers in order to understand
how the world’s ice masses will respond to the threat of global warming.

Each sensor node monitors parameters including temperature and

pressure. One advantage of a wireless solution is overcoming the
problem of damage to cables caused by movement of the ice which
occurs with traditional wired approaches.

Pharmaceuticals

Quality control and compliance with FDA and other government

mandates is imperative to pharmaceutical manufacturers. A wireless
sensor network allows companies to monitor ambient temperature in their
manufacturing and storage facilities. Benefits include improved process
and quality control, reduction in manual data collection and accelerated
manufacturing.

Food and beverage

Food and beverage manufacturers can use a wireless sensor network to

ensure hygienic production, storage and distribution of their products. By
monitoring the state of refrigerated or frozen foods, production and
storage conditions (temperature and humidity), equipment and processes
(electricity), food manufacturers can improve and ensure quality, reduce
spoilage and food poisoning, and prove conformity/traceability for
regulatory compliance and identification of problems. A recent
application in a bakery used a wireless network to monitor gas
consumption in ovens. In the first year (2005/06) savings averaged
20,000 kWh of gas per week. Savings in 2006/07 were around £75K.

Computer data centres

The power demands of newer high density computing equipment and the
need to keep them cool are growing exponentially. This is causing major
problems in terms of power supply capacity and environmental concerns.
There is growing awareness of the need to improve monitoring in data
centres to help identify hot spots where cooling is most critical. By
directing air flow more effectively better use can be made of the existing
cooling capacity. One key difficulty has been the lack of enough flexible
temperature monitoring points in the facility to check performance in
detail and raise alerts when hot spots arise. Traditional wired approaches
can be too expensive and inflexible.

To solve this problem a wireless sensor mesh network can be used which
is easy and quick to install with minimal disruption and allows
monitoring points to be moved around and added without having to re-
commission the whole network. Data collected by the sensors is fed back
to a data analysis application which can be configured to raise alarms
when limits are exceeded as well as logging the temperature data for
further analysis. Alternatively, data from the wireless system can easily be
interfaced with existing infrastructure monitoring systems if required.

In a recent data centre installation for an oil company in the Middle East
the sensing network quickly highlighted a potential overheating situation
which enabled advance remedial action to be taken avoiding the cost of
equipment repair and the impact on computing availability.

Heavy industry

There are few places more inhospitable to a sensor than a steel plant.
Extreme temperatures and harsh chemical, metallurgical, and mechanical
processes make any monitoring a challenge. Yet process monitoring is
critical to a steel plant’s profitably. Tough competition in the world steel
market holds prices down. Any unexpected maintenance shutdowns
reflect directly on the bottom line. At a point in steel making, electrical
current often arcs to the sides of the furnace. This super heats the
furnace wall, sometimes overloading its temperature
control mechanism. If the cooling system is allowed to fail, the molten
steel could burn through the walls of the furnace in a matter of minutes,
allowing molten metal to pour out onto the shop floor, endangering
workers’ lives and damage to equipment. Then, needless to say, the plant
would be down for a significant period of time.

For one major steel manufacturer, it was critical to find an accurate and
cost effective way to monitor and record temperature fluctuations within
the water jackets of their giant furnaces. With 24/7 production, there was
almost no downtime to install or replace the sensors. They had to be
placed or replaced quickly during a brief cool period in the melting cycle.
Even during these “cool” periods the temperature at the sensor site
measures over 125°F! The need for a quick installation, the high heat, and
difficult positioning made installing wired sensors impossible. Plus,
molten steel splashing around would vaporize any wires it touched!

Simple traditional wireless monitoring techniques were out, too. Strong

magnetic and electrical fields, plus the large masses of steel would
interrupt their transmissions, causing communication outages. In an
application where a minute’s delay can mean disaster, this was not
acceptable. Sensor nodes were placed between the inner and outer walls
of the furnace. They were able to withstand the heat from melting steel,
wide temperature swings, powerful magnetic fields, water spray, and
vibration.

Mesh networking routes data around any temporary trouble spots that
might occur. Frequency hopping lets the nodes search out the best
channel for clear communication. This insures a constant and accurate
flow of information to the plant’s maintenance and management teams.
The company depends on this critical information to handle preventive
maintenance more efficiently, eliminating the unscheduled downtime that
can turn a profitable steel plant into a loser.

Building automation

A wireless system deployed at an industrial facility in Sweden reduced

the facility’s energy costs by 37% over the course of one year.

The entire system was installed in an industrial building with a total

heated area of 3,600 square meters holding one oil-fired boiler and nine
air handling units with air heaters and recycling air control. Using real-
time temperature and energy usage data, the wireless sensor network-
based system optimized energy management – achieving a dramatic
improvement in efficiency that translated to significant bottom-line gains.
For a total installation cost of $45,000 , the energy management system
returned annual energy savings in the amount of $34,974 – nearly paying
for itself over the course of a single year.

The energy management system features multiple wireless sensor and

control devices that are connected into a self-healing multi-hop mesh
network, capable of rerouting a signal if line-of-sight is blocked. Every
ten minutes, all data collected by the modules are sent to the web server,
which in turn channels the values over the internet to a SQL database.
Operators connect to the database to read and change values, allowing
efficient management of the facility’s energy usage. Each time the web
server connects to the database, changed values are read and sent back to
the local controllers. In the industrial energy management facility, a
wireless module uses this information – including data referencing both
outside temperature and inside temperature – to precisely control the
radiator temperature.

Health care premises

In a recent installation for the pharmacy operations of an NHS provincial

hospital the wireless system monitors ambient temperature and
refrigerator temperatures in production, packing and storage areas. The
wireless system is deployed in two physically dispersed areas.

The pharmacy had a problem in that an important storage building was in

a remote location over 350m away on the other side of the hospital site.
In addition the main hospital buildings rise up on a hill in between the
two locations making any ‘line of sight’ wireless solution impossible to
implement. Due to cost and ongoing hospital improvement works a wired
system was not an option. In this application a multi-hop wireless
solution was the only viable solution.

By mounting mesh repeater nodes in weatherproof housings on the apex

of two intervening buildings the remote store temperature data is relayed
back to the main pharmacy system. The monitoring software provides
fully compliant and easy-to-manage system and alarm status information.

Waste processing
With recycling and efficient management of compostable waste high on
the UK agenda the technology being used to meet these challenges is
evolving quickly.

One company is processing the waste through large rotating drums to

achieve the desired results. To ensure proper sterilisation of the finished
compost the temperature of the drum contents in the final stage must be
monitored continuously and an auditable data set maintained. A number
of methods including Wi-Fi wireless had been tried but were unreliable
and performed poorly.

Following a very successful site trial using industrial mesh networking

devices the company purchased a 6-point system to cover both the
rotating sterilising drums and the plant ambient conditions. With fast and
easy installation, faultless data capture performance and reliability, IP66
housings and easy integration into the plant Wonderware monitoring
system, the system exactly meets this company's challenging
requirements.

Conclusion

As the demand for monitoring of critical facilities continues to increase,

the use of wireless sensor networks is growing due to their ease of
installation, flexibility and ability to solve challenging problems allowing
customers to quickly and more economically comply with legislation and
regulatory requirements.