Feasibility Study and Design for Wireless Sensor Networks in a Space Environment

Wireless sensor networks is a technology that has been used in a vast number of applications and environments with successful results in the past. Therefore increasing nowadays the number of users of this type of devices and their new applications. In this thesis we worked hand-in-hand with the ISIS B.V. Company to provide a proper WSN design to be deployed inside a spacecraft structure and satisfy a group of defined requirements. ISIS or Innovative Solutions in Space is a private company founded in January 2006 that focus on the development of nanosatellites and several space related services. Therefore this thesis will provide a detail feasibility study as for a communication and network design, for a wireless sensor network to be deployed in a satellite’s environment. The study will base on the deployment of this type of devices inside the ENVISAT structural model, where a measurements methodology is applied and the final results are analyzed. Following this study a communication scheme design is shown and described in detail, explaining the power consumption repercussion of this protocol on the final design. Finally presenting a complete network design providing both hardware and software details of the two main characters of this given network, the sensor node and the network’s gateway. The final design is evaluated by a protocol’s simulation which will provide a description on the final communication protocol. The results presented in this section will show the repercussion of the different network parameters on the network behavior and will provide a final evaluation on the defined final design.