Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2014 May 5;372(2017):20130304.
doi: 10.1098/rsta.2013.0304. Print 2014 Jun 13.

Communication techniques and challenges for wireless food quality monitoring

Reiner Jedermann  1 , Thomas Pötsch, Chanaka Lloyd
Affiliations

Communication techniques and challenges for wireless food quality monitoring

Reiner Jedermann et al. Philos Trans A Math Phys Eng Sci. .

Abstract

Remote measurement of product core temperature is an important prerequisite to improve the cool chain of food products and reduce losses. This paper examines and shows possible solutions to technical challenges that still hinder practical applications of wireless sensor networks in the field of food transport supervision. The high signal attenuation by water-containing products limits the communication range to less than 0.5 m for the commonly used 2.4 GHz radio chips. By theoretical analysis of the dependency of signal attenuation on the operating frequency, we show that the signal attenuation can be largely reduced by the use of 433 MHz or 866 MHz devices, but forwarding of messages over multiple hops inside a sensor network is mostly unavoidable to guarantee full coverage of a packed container. Communication protocols have to provide compatibility with widely accepted standards for integration into the global Internet, which has been achieved by programming an implementation of the constrained application protocol for wireless sensor nodes and integrating into IPv6-based networks. The sensor's battery lifetime can be extended by optimizing communication protocols and by in-network pre-processing of the sensor data. The feasibility of remote freight supervision was demonstrated by our full-scale 'Intelligent Container' prototype.

Keywords: constrained application protocol; intelligent container; quality-oriented tracking and tracing; signal attenuation; wireless sensor networks.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Schematic communication diagram. (Online version in colour.)
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Model prediction for signal attenuation as a function of distance: (a) fitting to measured values, (b) attenuation per metre as a function of frequency. (Online version in colour.)
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Overview of communication layers between WSN and FSU. (Online version in colour.)
Figure 4.
Figure 4.
Measured total current consumption of a sensor node for LPL and forwarding of a request/response pair by the CoAP protocol. (Online version in colour.)
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Gustavsson J, Cederberg C, Sonesson U, Otterdijk Rv, Meybeck A. 2011. Global food losses and food waste: extent, causes and prevention. In Interpack2011, pp. 1–38. Rome, Italy: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
    1. Jedermann R, Nicometo M, Uysal I, Lang W. 2014. Reducing food losses by intelligent food logistics. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A 372, 20130302 (10.1098/rsta.2013.0302) - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Hertog MLATM, Uysal I, McCarthy U, Verlinden BM, Nicolaï BM. 2014. Shelf life modelling for first-expired-first-out warehouse management. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A 372, 20130306 (10.1098/rsta.2013.0306) - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Astrium GmbH. 2013. SecureSystem: The future of container logistic management: Product homepage. See http://www.securesystem.net/.
    1. CSB Technologies GmbH. 2013. Container Security Box: CSB compact plug and protect solution, Product brochure. See http://www.csb-technologies.de/.

Publication types