WSN-based flutter control application for aircraft wings structural health monitoring

Abstract

This paper presents the design of a wireless sensor network architecture suitable for structural health monitoring of air-crafts. The main objective is to improve airplane safety by detecting flutter phenomenon along the wings and communicating this information to the cockpit computer to react before vibration reaches resonance. Therefore, study of network deployment in specific types of wings is performed. Furthermore, in order to enhance the reactiveness of the flight control process, a medium access protocol based on game theory is developed. Performance evaluation work shows that the proposed game-based communication scheme enhances packets transmission efficiency in terms of loss ratio and average delay, and ensures fair access for all nodes.