Reliable sensor networks

Abstract

Public transport offers affordable transport to many people every day. Due to material wear down, trains can break down and stop functioning. To prevent this from happening, modern technology can used be for condition monitoring to recognize material wear down and thus allowing trains to be mended in time. The Dutch Railways approached Logica to come up with a solution that performs condition monitoring inside a train environment. Logica's solution is the implementation of a wireless sensor network (WSN), where powered sensor nodes will be mounted as a linear array in a train compartment. These nodes will be used as a backbone network for data transport of certain train application sensor network, where data transport reliability is of major importance. This thesis project shows how a reliable sensor network can be established. This report discusses relevant terminology on sensor networking, presents background information and quantifying models on data transport reliability and introduces relevant data transport reliability protocol solutions. Based on the train applications that will use the backbone network, this report shows what the relevant requirements are for establishing such a reliable data transport network. Based on these requirements, protocol solutions are selected that improve data transport reliability. Finally, the reliability and performance evaluation of a sensor network shows how the selected protocol solutions perform and in which way they contribute to data transport reliability.