FPGA-based wireless sensor network platform for safety systems

Sensor communication applications not only require high performance processing but also flexible and reliable computing. Today, standard microprocessor systems are still application oriented and aren´t suitable by implication for reliability-related and safety-related applications. In order to achieve a certain safety integrity level (SIL), several measures, methodologies and especially additional components should be considered, which leads to more and more complex systems. For this reason, new application devices should be targeted. In this context, reconfigurable devices such as SRAM-based Field Programmable Gates Arrays (FPGAs) provide a suitable solution due to their flexibility, and the necessary computing performance at affordable design cost and time. In fact, SRAM-Based FPGAs are nowadays frequently used in embedded communication systems due to their design flexibility and reconfigurability. This paper presents a prototyping platform for an FPGA-based safety-related communication system for a wireless sensor network. As a case study an acceleration sensor application is introduced.