Smart Sensor Acoustic Communication Along Metallic Structures

In the last decades, smart sensor networks have become a vital component of society. It has been used over the past years to develop ways to create smart sensor networks in which every smart sensor can communicate its main parameters to the others in the network. In this way, the IEEE 1451 family of standards is becoming significantly used in several fields to establish a communication protocol between smart sensors. This family of standards has been expanded over the last decades with new standards introducing novelties regarding the various aspects of communication between smart sensors. This paper discusses using acoustic waves to transmit data between user applications and smart sensors over metallic-made structures. The possibility of sending modulated signals with an OOK digital modulation is also presented. Finally, the work shows an experimental setup to characterize, from an acoustic propagation point of view, the communication channel.