A Study on Lunar Surface Environment Long-Term Unmanned Monitoring System by Using Wireless Sensor Network

Abstract

An idea for lunar surface environment exploration system by using WSN (wireless sensor network) is proposed for long-term unmanned monitoring, and the large temperature difference between day and night, the loose soil structure of lunar surface and the space radiation intensity are considered. The system is composed of WSN, relay satellite of lunar, relay satellite of earth and earth station. An energy-balanced routing protocol is proposed to prolong the network lifetime. The communication protocol stack for lunar surface, lunar relay satellite, earth relay satellite and earth station is designed. The earth-moon communication technique based on relay satellite is proposed to guarantee real-time data transmission. Compared with the traditional technique, the idea proposed in this paper has advantages as: more detecting objects, larger detection range, longer detection time, higher reliability and lower costs.