TABLE OF CONTENTS Farid Dowla
Michael R. Moore
The purpose of this chapter is to provide a general approach to planning and implementing wireless sensor networks to support the arrays of sensors needed to operate plants, conduct scientific experiments, and test components. Using this brief tutorial, the reader should be able to acquire and organize the various sensor networks into a cohesive system and interface with vendors and subject matter experts as needed.
The primary purpose of sensor networks is to: (1) provide timely accurate data about the state of a plant so that the plant can run with maximum efficiency; (2) provide data to scientists as part of a complex experiment; or (3) provide trustworthy data for test and verification of components before they go into operation. Therefore, the final decisions about which kinds of networks to use should be based on the economics of lifetime cost versus the value of the data. Thus, the deployment of sensor networks must necessarily involve business and technical considerations. This chapter will focus mainly on the technical issues, but it will also alert the reader to some issues that especially impact cost.
In order to give a context for the subsequent technical discussions, this chapter begins with a very brief description of some of the ways in which sensor networks can be used to increase the efficiency of a plant.
Currently, many sensor networks are deployed to track the levels of the various vessels in a tank farm as part of...
