Microsystems for Environmental Health Monitoring of Military Systems

The final objective of this project is to develop a prototype of a low-power suite of microsensors to be used in a system that will monitor the health of missile/weapon systems during storage and shipping, under pre-launch conditions, and during post launch. This suite of microsensors will need to measure a variety of environmental variables such as humidity, shock, acoustic noise, atmospheric salt content, vibration, and gas concentrations. Phase I of the effort focuses on investigating the available sensing technologies, MEMS and fiber-optics in particular, to determine the feasibility of such a sensor suite, as well as the capabilities of those technologies sensor suite, as well as the capabilities of those technologies compared to missile system requirements. Trade-offs between modularity and integration will be performed. The use of sensor modularity and interaction will be performed. The use of sensor networking to improve suite performance over extreme ranges of environmental conditions will be explored. The result of Phase I will be a design for a sensor suite that includes sensors for a majority of the required environmental variables, as well as the required fabrication processes and fabrication facilities. Phase II of the effort will first fabricate, test, and redesign various components of the microsensor suite. Phase II will finish with a prototype system.