DESIGN OF A SENSOR NETWORK NODE FOR AIR QUALITY MONITORING IN NUCLEAR INSTALLATIONS

Abstract

Nowadays, the Sensor Networks offer many benefits to the environment and humanity, starting with monitoring environmental phenomena, monitoring and control of industrial facilities/processes (especially in Nuclear Power Plants , NPPs) and following up on the health status of the elderly. In nuclear field, radiation monitoring systems and networks are among the most important systems used to the assessment of nuclear safety and radiation protection processes. Furthermore these networks are used as inspection tool of occupational radiation protection to predict any states of diffraction or deviation of the correct operating factors to maintain the integrity of the internal or the surrounding environment of the nuclear facilities. This paper presents a prototype (hand made prototype) of a sensor network node (SN) for air quality monitoring system which can be used indoors or outdoors. The proposed SN is based on the AVR microcontroller and is characterized by the small size, low power consumption, simplicity, and lower cost. The microcontroller, µC, performs specific tasks, transfers data, and controls the functionality of the SN. It is often used as the brain in many embedded systems because of its great abilities, flexibility, ease of programming, low cost, and low power consumption. So that it was a compelling argument to use µC in the design of the sensor network.