Signal propagation and analysis in airborne wireless sensor networks

The most challenging issue in the design of wireless sensor networks for the aerospace application, is the sensor nodes’ energy consumption, efficiency and communication. Airborne Wireless Sensor Networks (AWSNs) are active and promising area of application of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), whereby sensor nodes perform sensing duties in the aerospace. However, in a traditional airplane monitoring system (AMS), data sensed from strain, vibration, ultrasound of structures or temperature, and humidity in cabin environment are transmitted to central data repository via wires, which comes with drawbacks such as expensive installation and maintenance, and complicated wired connections. Also, most of the wireless communication techniques used in the aerospace environment experience a high path loss and hence, hinders the range needed for transmission as the environment is an enclosed one. However, to increase information transmission, the only available option is by increasing the transmission power which also requires large apparatus in a limited enclosed environment. To solve the mentioned problems, this paper proposes a Magnetic Induction based Pulse Power. Analytical results of the Magnetic Induction based Pulse Power with an ordinary magnetic induction communication technique show an improvement in Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) and path loss with variation in distance between nodes and frequency of operation. This paper further formulates a nonlinear program to determine the optimal data (events) extraction in grid based airborne wireless sensor networks (AWSNs).