Intelligent sensor network for fence protection

The protection of private territories has been playing an important role for a long time. These areas are often bounded by fences in order to prevent the unauthorized passage. In this application, the fence of some kind of area (e.g. estate, motorway) is supplied with a network of autonomous, cooperative accelerometer sensors. As a result, the natural or intentional damage to the fence or any other kind of rare events can be detectable. ADXL345 accelerometers and Texas Instruments CC430 microcontrollers (equipped with on-board radio interface) were used for the implementation, because these devices support advanced power management. An efficient, reliable and low power consumption wireless network communication protocol has been designed based on SimpliciTI libraries combined with a user-friendly alarm signal transmission system, which could be monitored and controlled remotely. One-dimensional fences were assumed, so the sensors form a chain topology. If a node starts an alarm, the signal must be forwarded by the adjacent units at first. Thus, the transmitted message goes point by point to the center host.