MEASUREMENT OF ZIGBEE WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS IN MODE-STIRRED AND MODE-TUNED REVERBERATION CHAMBER

It is highly desirable to use advanced sensor networks to continuously monitor the structural health of an aircraft. It would be advantageous if the network was wireless to avoid the need for additional wire bundles and associated interconnects but the reliability of a suitable wireless channel in low loss enclosed structures needs to be understood. This paper reports on work undertaken testing the 2.4 GHz ZigBee wireless protocol in a mode stirred and mode tuned reverberation chamber. The results show that even for very low loss enclosures wireless communications is possible but only under very specific conditions. A higher loss chamber has more reliable communication channels, but even with loading there are large variations in packet error rates even between adjacent ZigBee channels.