Data-logging and supervisory control in wireless sensor networks

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are being increasingly used in a multitude of applications such as environmental and structural health monitoring, and condition-based maintenance. Even though the sensors collect a vast amount of data, only a tiny fraction of this data may be useful. This paper proposes a Data-Logging and Supervisory Control (DSC) architecture to manage the information gathered by the WSN and make decisions based on this information. We present an application module which would be able to effectively manipulate the sensor data and to support a Discrete Event Controller (DEC). The DEC is responsible for generating rule-based tasks in order to address information-centric issues such as data-logging, alarm and event reporting and security. A combined DSC framework is proposed to address data pre-processing challenges such as acquiring and recording signals, online analysis, offline analysis, report generation and data sharing.