Remote monitoring and controlling of gas sensors using VPN connection

The use of sensors is witnessing a dramatic increase. They are applied in diverse fields such as military, industrial, health, and smart homes. Monitoring these sensors could be made remotely with the help of communication networks. In order to use the widely available Internet for such applications the security issues become a big concern. Virtual Private Networks (VPN) provide a security blanket to the use of the Internet for remote monitoring and controlling. In this work a sensor network is practically implemented consisting of a WLAN Sensor_Actuator side, a WLAN Coordinator host, and a remote host connected to the coordinator through a VPN connection using Gbridge software. LabVIEW software is installed on the Sensor_Actuator host and the Coordinator host as a graphic user interface environment for monitoring the gas sensor reading and controlling an actuator. The measured round trip time (RTT) between the Sensor_Actuator side and the Coordinator side is found to be less than 15mS, while it was less than 300mS between the Coordinator side and the remote host.