Performance analysis of wireless sensor networks for wind turbine monitoring systems

Maintenance and monitoring of large wind turbines is difficult using manual process as turbines are installed in the wind farm located far from monitoring centers. Wireless sensor networks are used to automate the monitoring process for wind turbines. In this paper, we evaluate the performance of wireless sensor network for monitoring wind turbines. We consider different parameters such as total power used in sensing and reporting the data, sampling rate, channel bandwidth, number of channels and number of active sensors in a given channel while evaluating the performance of the sensor network that is used in wind turbine monitoring. To corroborate our analysis, we present numerical results obtained from simulations.

I. Introduction

Wind energy is regarded as one of the major sources for cleaner energy. Recent studies have shown that the United States could reduce its carbon emissions by two billion tons by 2050 if it were to produce 20% wind energy. Due to the high demand of reliable renewable energy, wind energy is becoming more popular day-by-day. As the wind turbines are installed in the wind farm located far from monitoring centers, maintenance and monitoring of those large wind turbines is difficult if manual process is used. Furthermore, data acquisition process for large and remote wind farms can be costly as well as time-consuming. Without having an automated data acquisition and monitoring process, a simple undetected damage could lead to a sudden and catastrophic failure resulting in an expensive repair and significant downtime of the turbine. Wireless sensor network [1], [2] is regarded as a viable technology for data collection and monitoring large structure as well as structures located in remote locations [3].