Acoustic-based wireless data transmission for process monitoring

In this paper, acoustic wave has been investigated as a medium to transmit data from sensors inside a machine to a receiver outside of the machine without wire connection. To evaluate the effectiveness of such a acoustic based data transmission, the propagation of acoustic wave within an injection mold was modeled on the ANSYS platform. The received signal strength as well as the noise level caused by reflections inside the machine structure was quantified numerically to evaluate the limit of offset distance between the axes of transmitter and receiver. The results were then experimentally validated by using the data sampled from a production grade injection molding machine.