Distributed Data Acquisition System for Condition Monitoring of Low-speed Machines Using Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Low-speed machines play an important role in industrial production, and the condition monitoring of these machines is of great importance. Monitoring with wireless sensor network (WSN) has many advantages. To monitor the condition of low-speed machines, we need to acquire low-frequency, weak and hardly-varying physical signals. As such, we designed a WSN system for high-precision signal acquisition. Actual measurement results showed that the acquisition precision of nodes could reach 0.01 mV. When the sensor nodes continuously acquired and sent data, the energy conversion efficiency was higher than 90% and the nodes’ power consumption came to about 110mW. The WSN system was designed based on the low-power consumption 802.15.4 MAC/Zigbee, and the WSN was built through MESH topology. Data transmission was stable and the PER was lower than 1%. The measurement results under laboratory and industrial field conditions showed that the WSN system designed met the requirements for on-site data acquisition and monitoring of low-speed machines.