A WSN solution for light aircraft pilot health monitoring

Luís M. L. Oliveira, Joel J. P. C. Rodrigues, Bruno M. Macao, Paulo A. Nicolau, Liang Zhou

Abstract: Wireless sensor networks can be used to improve both safety critical and unsafety critical aircrafts systems. Using wireless sensor networks can help to increase the number of sensors as well the system redundancy and also helps to reduce the aircraft system weight and complexity, improving the fuel efficiency and maintenance costs. Supporting standard protocols in all wireless sensor nodes simplifies the application development, configuration and maintenance. The wireless sensor network devices can also be used to monitor the physiological pilot's parameters. This paper presents a complete and innovator solution, mainly based on standard protocols, to monitor light aircraft and gliders pilot's physiologic parameters. The proposed system does not interfere with pilot's agility, is simple to install, configure and operate. To evaluate the system, a real testbed was deployed.