A Wireless, Thin-Film Surface Acoustic Wave (SAW) Sensor System for Rocket Propulsion Test Applications

NASA is looking for advanced sensor technologies, especially wireless embedded sensor systems, to support rocket propulsion development. The enabling technology should provide a highly flexible instrumentation solution capable of monitoring remote or inaccessible measurement locations. This sensor system should substantially reduce operational costs and evolutionary improvements in ground, launch and flight system operational robustness. It should provide an advanced diagnostics capability to monitor test facility parameters including temperature, pressure, strain and near-field acoustics. To address this critical need, X-wave Innovations, Inc. (XII) and Prof. Fang Li from New York Institute of Technology (NYIT) propose an innovative passive, wireless, high temperature embedded sensor system that is capable of providing high-bandwidth measurements of temperature, pressure and strain on both rotating and non-rotating propulsion engine components. For the Phase I program, XII will prototype an embedded sensor system and demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed technique for passive, wireless, multi-parameter measurements. For the Phase II program, XII will focus on refining the prototype system design and development with improved hardware and software. For the Phase III program, XII will focus on optimizing the prototype performance and collaborating with our commercial partners to package the sensor technology into a commercially-available system.