The Tire as an Intelligent Sensor

Active safety systems are based upon the accurate and fast estimation of the value of important dynamical variables such as forces, load transfer, actual tire-road friction (kinetic friction) muk, and maximum tire-road friction available (potential friction) mup. Measuring these parameters directly from tires offers the potential for improving significantly the performance of active safety systems. We present a distributed architecture for a data-acquisition system that is based on a number of complex intelligent sensors inside the tire that form a wireless sensor network with coordination nodes placed on the body of the car. The design of this system has been extremely challenging due to the very limited available energy combined with strict application requirements for data rate, delay, size, weight, and reliability in a highly dynamical environment. Moreover, it required expertise in multiple engineering disciplines, including control-system design, signal processing, integrated-circuit design, communications, real-time software design, antenna design, energy scavenging, and system assembly.