This paper presents a novel design of wireless mobile platform which enables effective integration of a number of optical fibre sensors with an advanced mobile wireless sensor network (WSN) and allows for potential applications such as monitoring in remote and harsh environments and tracking, exploiting fully the advantages offered both by mobile WSN and by advanced optical fibre sensing technologies. The platform which was designed and implemented consists of an optical fibre sensor module and a smart mobile WSN module, which shows important advantages for mobile sensing and tracking and mesh networking. In this study, a fibre Bragg grating (FBG)-based temperature sensor was specially designed and integrated successfully into the optical fibre sensor module as an exemplar to investigate the performance of the integrated system based on the mobile WSN platform. The positive experimental results obtained have confirmed the functionality of the platform designed and demonstrated its capacity for real-time optical fibre sensor data monitoring, processing and wireless transmission. The successful creation of this type of wireless mobile platform with optical fibre sensors would be expected to make an important impact on many sectors, where either conventional optical sensor designs or WSNs alone cannot meet the systems requirements.
This paper presents a novel design of a system for using smart mobile robots to deploy a Wireless Sensor Network
(WSN) for different optical fibre sensors, allowing for potential applications where there is a remote and harsh
monitoring environment and allowing for the advantages of the optical fibre technology for the sensor itself to be used.
The platform which was designed is comprised of a smart mobile robot, an optical fibre sensor module and a WSN
module integrated with a localization component based on Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI), which has
important advantages for mobile sensing and tracking, flexible deployment and mesh networking. The design principle
and implementation-related issues for the platform have been discussed in this study. To investigate the performance of
the mobile WSN platform, an experiment simulating measurement in a real environment has been performed. With the
positive experimental data obtained, the functionalities of the platform are successfully demonstrated, which enables the
real-time monitoring and transmission of sensor data and in addition estimated positional information. The exploitation
of this kind of mobile WSN platform with fibre optic sensors is expected to make an impact on many applications,
including those where advanced optical fibre sensing is particularly advantageous, yet where conventional WSNs cannot
meet the requirements of the total sensing system.
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