Energy efficient wireless sensor network for dynamic system monitoring

This paper presents a systematic approach to the design and implementation of an energy-efficient multi-sensor network. The nodes of the sensor network form the basis of a sectioned Bayesian network that can be used to determine the state of the system being monitored. A key issue in the design of Bayesian networks for monitoring engineering systems is to ensure that reliable inference scheme about the health state of the system can be made by combining information acquired from each sensor in the system into a single Bayesian network. As the size of the network increases, aggregating information made by all the sensors becomes computationally intractable. Hence, sectioning of the Bayesian network based on functional or logical constraints allows computational efficiency in aggregating information and reduces overall communication requirements. Furthermore, an in-network data processing scheme, motivated by the concept of Dynamic Voltage Scheduling, has been investigated to minimize computation energy consumption through dynamically adjusting the voltage supply and clock frequency of the individual sensors. As a result, the processor idle time can be better utilized for prolonged computation latency, leading to significantly reduced energy cost and increased computational efficiency.