Application of Virtual Instrumentation for Sensor Network Monitoring CONSTANTIN VOLOSENCU VICTOR MALITA Department of Automatics and Applied Informatics “Politehnica” University of Timisoara Bd. V. Parvan nr. 2, Timisoara, 300223 ROMANIA constantin.volosencu@aut.upt.ro http://www.aut.upt.ro/~cvolos/ Abstract: - This paper presents a technical solution for sensor network monitoring based on virtual instrumentation. Computer developing allows usage of virtual instrumentation for measurement, data acquisition, signal processing, estimation, monitoring, fault detection and diagnosis. The sensor networks may be use as distributed measuring sensors for the physical variables in distributed parameter systems, in space, as temperature, acceleration, pressure, luminosity and humidity. There are many possible applications of monitoring in the field of distributed parameter systems, based on the new technologies of intelligent ad-hoc wireless sensor networks. Key-Words: - monitoring systems, sensor networks, virtual instrumentation, measurements instrumentation, long distance monitoring by Internet. 1 Introduction The paper is made in the general context of the development of monitoring distributed parameter systems, based on the new technologies of sensor networks and virtual instrumentation. Monitoring of industrial systems for a fast detection and diagnosis of faults is a necessary task in modern control systems. The development of sensor networks, built with many intelligent sensor, at a low cost, makes possible the measurement of different physical variables as: temperature, pressure, luminosiy, and humidity. Usage of estimation techniques allows accurate monitoring, in which the sensor network may be seen as a „distributed sensor”. The technology of virtual instrumentation implemented on personal computers has been developed with succes in many electronic applications, measurements, data acquisition, signal processing, system identification, fault detection and diagnosis. The theme of the paper is framed in some important scientific and technical domain, as: intelligent wireless sensor networks, system identification, fault detection and diagnosis, virtual instrumentation on personal computers, distributed parameter systems. The paper presents the results of a development of a virtual instrument for monitoring a sensor network with capabilitis of measuring physical variable in space. The virtual instrument conects the sensor at the computer, it is capable to acquire information transmited by each sensor in part. An estimator for temperature was implemented based on the least square method [1, 2, 3, 4]. 2 System architecture 2.1 General Structure The block diagram of the application is presented in Fig. 1. Fig. 1. Application structure Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Manufacturing Engineering, Quality and Production Systems ISSN: 1792-4693 264 ISBN: 978-960-474-220-2