Wireless Fire Detector

The objective of the proposed work is the development of a micro-sized and intelligent, wireless fire detection system that can operate in the harsh environment of military aircrafts. The system will use optical sensors configured to discriminate between fires and false alarms particularly the flash from projectile impacts. The wireless aspect of the system will enable the sensors to be easily installed and moved, where needed, and will reduce the need for much of the cumbersome and costly wiring of existing fire detection systems. The wireless network component of the sensor system will perform three critical functions: 1) Detect – that is, capture the measurements from the sensors; 2) Decide -- determine if the measurements or “signature” from the sensors represents a real fire or a false alarm; and 3) Distribute – transmit any “detected events” through the network to the controlling unit and finally, the pilot console or and/or management system. To accomplish this, the system will employ an ad-hoc mesh networking approach. Each sensor (or set of sensors) will be integrated with a 900MhZ low power radio frequency (RF) node that will be capable of self-organizing into a network and communicating with other radio nodes to propagate the sensor data. Each sensor node will have the intelligence to process the sensor data that it captures, and if required, fuse that data with the data from other sensor nodes. The mesh networking will be used to communicate between nodes within a dry bay. Advanced chip antennas will be used to enable directional coverage for radio propagation and provide an additional reliability to operate in a noisy EMI environment. To transmit the data between bays, repeater/router radio nodes will be used on either side of a compartment walls adjoining dry bays of the aircraft, connected to each other with thin aircraft-grade shielded wire which can be installed through the existing wiring harness. The design will be based on work conducted in a previous DHS program using wireless RF technology which enabled communication between multiple gas sensors within a metallic shipping container. The Phase I deliverables will include the functional design of a smart and reliable fire detection and wireless ad-hoc mesh network system that is capable of integrating signals from analog sensors, making on-board knowledge-based decisions, and communicating within metal compartments.