A smart data logger for enhancing data communication in Wi-Fi based mobile systems

Abstract

Accurate and complete data acquisition is a key challenge for mobile systems that use wireless sensor network (WSN) for communication. In a WSN system, data may be lost due to communication errors among receivers and the data processor. Such a system should be monitored to avoid any data loss (and/or inaccuracy) due to any system failures including wireless signal fading. In this work, a smart data logger is introduced in a wireless local area network (WLAN) based data transmission and reception system to enhance the accuracy of data acquisition. A monitoring mechanism is added to the proposed system to check if any receiver is not functioning properly. If a receiver is detected unexpectedly inactive, corresponding data should be stored in the newly proposed data logger and should be sent to the receiver at a later time. A system with the proposed data logger is implemented by using advanced RISC (reduced instruction set computing) machines (ARM) processor and Wi-Fi technology. Experimental results show that data loss is drastically reduced due to the addition of the data logger. In addition, the proposed system is flexible and helps save power, enhance security, and reduce cost.