It is essential to monitor and protect high-value assets such as aerospace systems while in transit to the customer location or the final assembly site. OMEGA has developed an automated data collection system with wireless sensors in order to overcome the challenges of conventional solutions and protect high-value assets. OMEGA offers continuous and proactive monitoring that facilitates any preventative action to be taken before damage occurs in sensitive assets. This approach reduces the impact of any deviations from the specified environment.
Problem
As Aerospace Engineers are well aware, high-value assets such as propellant fuel, propellant tanks and control panel assemblies must be maintained in controlled environments during all stages of production, storage and transportation. For instance, exposure to extreme temperature and humidity during storage can cause permanent damage to sensitive components and can cost millions of dollars. Even worse, an unidentified defect could lead to catastrophic failure during the course of operation.
Attaching passive humidity/temperature monitors to inventoried items has been a traditional approach to asset monitoring. However, in this approach a periodic manual survey of all inventoried items has to be made, which is not only laborious but also prone to human error. Also, this is not a continuous monitoring solution either because it only reacts to problems that have already occurred. But what the industry actually requires is a proactive, preventative strategy.
Solution
The ZW Wireless Monitoring System has been specifically designed by OMEGA to offer data security and assurance that is important for protecting high-value aerospace assets such as rocket engines.
OMEGA’s robust solution comprises of installing individual sensor nodes that commonly sample the environment and transmit the data to a receiver, which, in turn, maintains a complete database of all sampled data. Besides providing in-situ monitoring, the probe units can continuously monitor even when it is removed from the wireless environment during transportation. The result is a full audit trail via the complete life span of the assets.
Results
Many benefits are offered by OMEGA’s ZW Series, including power management, data security and data assurance. Data losses can occur at various levels: Ethernet connectivity loss, receiver loss or radio loss. Normally, these types of failures are quickly rectified but the information lost during downtime can put millions of dollars of valuable materials at risk. OMEGA® ZW Series wireless receivers offer confirmation to the transmitter that the data has been properly received, with automatic retransmission as required.
Data logging at every possible failure point enables the information to be recovered following system restoration. The power conservation feature also allows the user to unplug the humidity/temperature sensor while continuing to log environmental data during transport of valuable material—therefore offering continuous coverage.
A key concern in all industries is cyber security, which is particularly significant to military and aerospace suppliers. Even though the environmental data itself may not be of importance to adversaries, the inferred information concerning material movement, dates, and quantities, may be very sensitive. The ZW Series offers complete 128-bit SSL encryption to protect against any intrusions.
Wireless product power management is always an issue, particularly with regard to the extension of battery life. OMEGA’s ZW Series employs adaptive transmission rates depending on both the measured data exceeding specified thresholds and local data logging that enables burst transmission to increase battery life. This power management feature also lowers cost by extending the product lifespan and reducing maintenance.
This information has been sourced, reviewed and adapted from materials provided by OMEGA Engineering Ltd.
For more information on this source, please visit OMEGA Engineering Ltd.