A Scalable Redundant TDMA Protocol for High-Density WSNs Inside an Aircraft

We present the results of a measurement campaign conducted with a wireless sensor network (WSN) deployment inside an aircraft. A robust and scalable TDMA protocol for mission-critical applications was developed, which exploits spatial diversity provided by redundant access points. The WSN, consisting of 500 sensor nodes organized in three cells with two redundant access points per cell, was installed in an Airbus A330-300. The link quality and the packet error rate with and without the redundant access points was evaluated. It was found that the packet error rate could be decreased more than four times by using the spatial diversity introduced by the dual access point approach.