BILBO Network: a proposal for communications in aircraft Structural Health Monitoring sensor networks

Abstract

In the aeronautical environment, numerous regulatory and communication protocols exist that cover interconnection of on-board equipment inside the aircraft. Developed and implemented by the airlines since the 1960s, these communication systems are reliable, strong, certified and able to contact different sensors distributed throughout the aircraft. However, the scenario is slightly different in the structural health monitoring (SHM) field as the requirements and specifications that a global SHM communication system must fulfill are distinct. The number of SHM sensors installed in the aircraft rises into the thousands, and it is impossible to maintain all of the SHM sensors in operation simultaneously because the overall power consumption would be of thousands of Watts. This design of a new communication system must consider aspects as management of the electrical power supply, topology of the network for thousands of nodes, sampling frequency for SHM analysis, data rates, selected real-time considerations, and total cable weight. The goal of the research presented in this paper is to describe and present a possible integration scheme for the large number of SHM sensors installed on-board an aircraft with low power consumption. This paper presents a new communications system for SHM sensors known as the Bi-Instruction Link Bi-Operator (BILBO).