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Study of path loss and data transmission error of IEEE 802.15.4 compliant wireless sensors in small-scale manufacturing environments

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Abstract

Wireless sensors emerge as a promising candidate for supporting a wide range of plant floor monitoring applications in manufacturing; nevertheless, manufacturing environments are notoriously harsh for radio propagation. Usually abundant of stationary and moving objects, manufacturing environments may cause transmission errors among wireless sensors due to blocking, scattering, and multipath effects. This study aims to experimentally investigate the nature of such transmission errors due to common stationary and moving obstacles in small-scale manufacturing environments inside a machine shop and with a moving forklift, respectively. The measurement study was performed using the commonly adopted IEEE 802.15.4-based 2.4 GHz Zigbee radio. The measurements show that the occurrence of transmission errors closely depends on the received signal strength in both stationary and moving settings, and the transmission errors can be mostly avoided by controlling the transmit power to assure the received signal strength above the radio receiving sensitivity level. It is also found that electromagnetic noise due to the typical machinery has negligible effects on the transmission error.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Clemson University, Clemson, SC 29634-0921, USA

    Lei Tang & Yong Huang

  2. CIMS Research Center, Tongji University, Shanghai, 200092, China

    Min Liu

  3. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Clemson University, Clemson, SC 29634, USA

    Kuang-Ching Wang & Fan Yang

  4. School of Mechano-Electronic Engineering, Xidian University, Xi’an, 710071, China

    Daxing Zhang

Authors
  1. Lei Tang
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  2. Min Liu
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  3. Kuang-Ching Wang
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  4. Yong Huang
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  5. Fan Yang
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  6. Daxing Zhang
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Correspondence to Yong Huang.

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Tang, L., Liu, M., Wang, KC. et al. Study of path loss and data transmission error of IEEE 802.15.4 compliant wireless sensors in small-scale manufacturing environments. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 63, 659–669 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-012-3928-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-012-3928-3

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