FPGA-based wireless sensor network for safety-related cognitive systems

Wireless sensor networks for monitoring and steering industrial systems have emerged as an important new application area for wireless embedded technology in safety-related systems. Therefore several hardware platforms can be targeted. Due to their flexibility and reconfigurability along with high performance and power efficiency, modern Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) are an excellent platform to realize such intelligent sensor networks. On one hand, FPGAs can integrate embedded processors and on-chip memory into a single die and can be easily configured to interface with a wide variety of popular communications protocols like SPI, UART and I2C, which are used for sensor communication. On the other hand, the reconfigurability of FPGAs supports the design of self-organizing computing systems, which are increasingly used in sensor applications. In this paper an FPGA-based wireless smart sensor network that integrates acceleration sensors for increasing safety aspects in cognitive systems used for industrial communication is presented.