Development and validation of a simulator for wireless data acquisition in gas turbine engine testing

Xuewu Dai, John E. Mitchell, Yang Yang, Ian Glover, Konstantinos Sasloglou, Robert Atkinson, Isabella Panella, John Strong, Werner Schiffers, Partha Dutta

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

9 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Owing to its cable-free deployment, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have drawn great attention as a new technique for industrial data acquisition. However, the harsh environment of the gas turbine engine provides a number of challenges to deployment of wireless sensors. A definitive study of the impact of harsh environments on WSNs is currently lacking, which represents an obstacle to WSN's deployment in safety-critical industrial instrumentation and automation. In this study, the authors report the test results of applying WSNs to data acquisition in gas turbine engine testing and the development of a realistic software simulator with the purpose of de-risking the wireless data transmission technology in a project called WIDAGATE (wireless data acquisition in gas turbine engine testing). This study provides an overview of the simulation platform developed and investigates how small-scale tests of a WSN deployed on a real engine were used to validate and improve the simulator platform. This work proposes realistic modelling of the physical layer (radio channel) when subject to interference in harsh industry environment during aero-engine testing. Based on the validated, realistic physical layer model, different medium access control protocols are simulated to demonstrate how this improved simulator can be used to select an appropriate protocol.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)183-192
Number of pages10
JournalIET Wireless Sensor Systems
Volume3
Issue number3
Early online date26 Aug 2013
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Sep 2013
Externally publishedYes

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