Reconfigurable miniature sensor nodes for condition monitoring

Abstract

The wireless sensor networks are being deployed at escalating rate for various application fields. The ever growing number of application areas requires a diverse set of algorithms with disparate processing needs. The wireless sensor networks also need to adapt to the prevailing energy conditions and processing requirements. The preceding reasons rule out the use of a single fixed design. Instead a general purpose design that can rapidly adapt to different conditions and requirements is desired. In lieu of the traditional inflexible wireless sensor node consisting of a micro-controller, radio transceiver, sensor array and energy storage, we propose a rapidly reconfigurable miniature sensor node, implemented with a transport triggered architecture processor on a low-power Flash FPGA. Also power consumption and silicon area usage comparison between 16-bit fixed and floating point and 32-bit floating point implementations is presented in this paper. The implemented processors and algorithms are intended for rolling bearing condition monitoring, but can be fully extended for other applications as well.