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Wireless Sensor Network Platform for Harsh Industrial Environments WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORK PLATFORM FOR HARSH INDUSTRIAL ENVIRONMENTS by Ahmad El Kouche A thesis submitted to the School of Computing In conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Queen’s University Kingston, Ontario, Canada (September, 2013) Copyright ©Ahmad El Kouche, 2013 Abstract Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are popular for their wide scope of application domains ranging from agricultural, medical, defense, industrial, social, mining, etc. Many of these applications are in outdoor type environments that are unregulated and unpredictable, thus, potentially hostile or physically harsh for sensors. The popularity of WSNs stems from their fundamental concept of being low cost and ultra-low power wireless devices that can monitor and report sensor readings with little user intervention, which has led to greater demand for WSN deployment in harsh industrial environments. We argue that there are a new set of architectural challenges and requirements imposed on the hardware, software, and network architecture of a wireless sensor platform to operate effectively under harsh industrial environments, which are not met by currently available WSN platforms. We propose a new sensor platform, called Sprouts. Sprouts is a readily deployable, physically rugged, volumetrically miniature, modular, network standard, plug-and-play (PnP), and easy to use sensor platform that will assist university researchers, developers, and industrial companies to evaluate WSN applications in the field, and potentially bring about new application domains that were previously difficult to accomplish using off the shelf WSN development platforms. Therefore, we addresses the inherent requirements and challenges across the hardware, software, and network layer required for designing and implementing Sprouts sensor platform for harsh industrial environments. We fully implement the hardware, network, and software architecture for the Sprouts platform and verify that they meet the requirements for harsh environments. We deploy the Sprouts platform customized with our PnP ultrasound sensor module in an industrial application to monitor the health conditions of Syncrude's vibration screens operating under extreme harsh conditions. Sprouts has been showcased in OCE Discovery 2011, and has been proven to be extremely valuable for industrial mining companies such as Syncrude. ii Co-Authorship • A. El Kouche, L. Al-Awami, H. Hassanein, K. Obaia, “WSN application in the harsh industrial environment of the oil sands,” in the 7th IEEE International Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing Conference (IWCMC), 2011, pp. 613-618. • A. El Kouche, L Al-Awami, H. Hassanein, “Dynamically Reconfigurable Energy Aware Modular Software (DREAMS) Architecture for WSNs in Industrial Environments,” Procedia Computer Science, vol. 5, pp. 264-271, 2011. • A. El Kouche, “Towards a wireless sensor network platform for the Internet of Things: Sprouts WSN platform,” in the IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC), 2012, pp.632-636. • A. El Kouche, H. Hassanein, K. Obaia, “Monitoring the reliability of industrial equipment using wireless sensor networks,” in the 8th IEEE International Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing Conference (IWCMC), 2012, pp. 88-93. • El Kouche, H. Hassanein, “Ultrasonic Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) Using Wireless Sensor Networks,” Procedia Computer Science, vol. 10, pp. 136-143, 2012. • A. E. Al-Fagih, A. El Kouche, S. Oteafy, A. Alma'aitah, “Utilizing RFID-WSNs for reducing the footprint of the Oil Sands industry,” in the IEEE Global Communications (GLOBECOM) Workshops, Workshop on Green Internet of Things (G-IoT), 2012, pp. 374-379. • A. El Kouche, A. Alma’aitah, H. Hassanein, K. Obaia, “Monitoring Operational Mining Equipment Using Sprouts Wireless Sensor Network Platform,” in the 9th IEEE International Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing (IWCMC), 2013, pp.1388-1393. • A. El Kouche, M. Rashwan, H. Hassanein, “Energy Consumption Measurements and Reduction of Zigbee based Wireless Sensor Networks,” in the IEEE International Global Communications (GLOBECOM) Conference, 2013, pp. 1-6. iii Acknowledgements I would like to extend my greatest gratitude to my supervisor Dr. Hossam Hassanein for his excellent supervision and guidance in academic matter and outside. None of my research work would have been possible without his constant and inexhaustible support. I would like to thank you for being so patient with many of us, and for working so hard with us during publication submissions. I would like to thank you for your jovial approach to work and life in general and for passing that attitude to me. I hope to continue working closely with you in the future, and I hope to make you proud in my future career endeavors. It has been a great privilege having you as a mentor, and I feel very fortunate having been your student. I would like thank my parents for their endless love and support. I would like to thank my mom for her continuous encouragements to keep me going during tough times, and for calling me almost every day even when I didn't feel like talking. I would also like to thank my dad for teaching me the joy attained from hard work, and that every plan or idea can be started immediately. I would like to thank my uncle Adam for teaching me that a task done right is a task you put your heart into, a task you don't cut corners on, and a task you see to completion. I would like to thank my brother Mohamed, and my two sisters Safa and Wissal for their love and patience. Thank you Safa for helping me with all my schooling growing up. I would like to thank my wife Lindsay for her endless love. Thank you for being so patient and supportive every day. You have been the best friend I have ever had or ever wished for in life. I would like to thank all my colleagues at the Telecommunications Research Lab. Specifically, I would like to thank Dr. Abdulmonem Rashwan for his tireless technical support with the server software for the Syncrude project and other various aspects of the project; without your help, many aspects of the Syncrude project would not have been possible. I would like to thank Dr. Abdallah Almaaitah for always being there ready to lend a helping hand on many aspects of the Syncrude project, and thank you so much for helping build the Syncrude miniature testing model. iv I would like to thank Dr. Louai Al-Awami for being involved deeply in the Syncrude project during the early development stages when we had planned some of the fundamentals of the project. I would also like to thank Dr. Sharief Oteafy for supporting the Syncrude project in many ways including presentations and project extensions. I would like to thank Mrs. Basia Palmer for her support during my Ph.D. program. I would like to also thank the Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE), Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), and Syncrude for financially supporting several of our research projects at the Telecommunications Research Lab (TRLab). v Statement of Originality (Required only for Division IV Ph.D.) I hereby certify that all of the work described within this thesis is the original work of the author. Any published (or unpublished) ideas and/or techniques from the work of others are fully acknowledged in accordance with the standard referencing practices. (Ahmad El Kouche) (September, 2013) vi Table of Contents Abstract ...................................................................................................................................... ii Co-Authorship ........................................................................................................................... iii Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................... iv Statement of Originality ............................................................................................................. vi Chapter 1 Introduction ................................................................................................................ 1 1.1 Motivation and Objectives ................................................................................................. 3 1.2 Contributions .................................................................................................................... 4 1.3 Thesis Organization ........................................................................................................... 6 Chapter 2 WSN Platform Architecture ........................................................................................ 7 2.1 WSN Platform Architecture ............................................................................................... 8 2.2 Hardware Architecture ...................................................................................................... 9 2.3 Network Architecture ........................................................................................................ 9 2.4 Software Architecture ...................................................................................................... 10 2.5 Popular WSN Platforms .................................................................................................. 11 2.6 WSN Platform Attributes ................................................................................................ 14 2.7 Sensor Platform Attributes Comparison for Harsh Environments ..................................... 17 2.8 Summary ........................................................................................................................
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