Intelligent Wireless Sensor Communication for Health Monitoring

The key innovation of this proposal is the design of a low-cost high data rate wireless sensor network for rocket engine test facilities. Time Modulated Ultra-wideband (TM-UWB) technology is the key to implementing this wireless sensor network. To the best of our knowledge, no other wireless technology can achieve the high data rate and high channel capacity required for rocket engine testing. During Phase I, we have demonstrated the feasibility of our concept. In Phase II, we will further develop the complete architecture and develop a prototype wireless sensor network to evaluate the system performance and fields demonstrate its capability. The proposed wireless sensor network consists of a network controller and many smart sensor nodes. Each smart sensor node is equipped with a TM-UWB transmitter, a narrow band receiver, and a multiplexed data acquisition system. The UWB transmitter is used to transmit the digitized sensor data to the network controller at a data rate of at least 1.25Mbps. The narrow band receiver is used to receive control and configuration commands from the network controller, which will be very infrequent and can be very low data rate. We believe this is the most cost effective architecture for Phase II.