Simulation of wireless sensor networks on vessels under consideration of EMC

Within the engine room of a modern vessel up to 15.000 wired sensors are monitoring all functions of the engines and associated systems. Cabeling is an important cost factor. Therefore a wireless sensor network is of special interest. A self organizing wireless sensor network has been developed and tested inside the engine room by the Institute of Measurement Technology and EMC of the Hamburg University of Technology. Fieldtests inside an engine room are time limited, expensive and not always possible. For that reason a simulation platform is of special interest which takes the EMC conditions of the engine room into account. Within this paper the engine room is investigated and a first approach of a TOSSIM-based simulation tool is developed and tested. TOSSIM is a discrete event simulator for TinyOS sensor networks.