A Fault Tolerant Wired/Wireless Sensor Network Architecture for Monitoring Pipeline Infrastructures

This paper proposes a new fault-tolerant sensor network architecture for monitoring pipeline infrastructures. This architecture is an integrated wired and wireless network. The wired part of the network is considered the primary network while the wireless part is used as a backup among sensor nodes when there is any failure in the wired network. This architecture solves the current reliability issues of wired networks for pipelines monitoring and control. This includes the problem of disabling the network by disconnecting the network cables due to artificial or natural reasons. In addition, it solves the issues raised in recently proposed network architectures using wireless sensor networks for pipeline monitoring. These issues include the issues of power management and efficient routing for wireless sensor nodes to extend the life of the network. Detailed advantages of the proposed integrated network architecture are discussed under different application and fault scenarios.