Rotor Wireless Load and Motion Monitoring Sensor Network

The Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation (SAC) and the U.S. Army Aviation Development Directorate - Aviation Applied Technology Directorate (ADD-AATD) are jointly sponsoring the Capability-Based Operations and Sustainment Technology-Aviation (COST-A) program. The objective of COST-A is to demonstrate an integrated set of high-value diagnostics, prognostics, and system health management technologies that reduce the maintenance burden, without sacrificing safety. A key technology for the COST-A project was the development of a rotor local wireless sensor network (RLWSN) for purposes of data acquisition from self-powered, wireless rotor sensors. Two key requirements were identified: deterministic quality of service for wireless communications and a scalable architecture that supports growth in the number of sensors for future applications. This paper presents a model-based approach to design and implementation of a RLWSN gateway that addresses these requirements. The approach, which included simulation and validation of models, has resulted in an architecture for an antenna array that ensures the desired quality of service at the physical layer of wireless transmissions without the need for protocol based recovery methods, thereby improving bandwidth efficiency and utilization raising the upper bound on scalability of the sensor network.