Lamb-Waves-Based Sparse Distributed Penetrating Communication via Phase-Position Modulation for Enclosed Metal Structures

Sensor nodes have been widely used for mechanical equipment condition monitoring, especially for enclosed metal structures. In these cases, it is important to achieve communication between the sensor nodes inside the enclosed metal structures and the outside receiver node. Conventional wired communication using cables will affect the structural integrity, and wireless communication using electromagnetic waves will be shielded by metal structures, so neither is desirable. Motivated by these issues, this article proposes a Lamb-waves-based sparse distributed penetrating communication (SDPC) system using the propagation characteristics of Lamb waves considered harmful in previous studies to accomplish wireless simultaneous data communication. Combining phase-shift keying and pulse position modulation mechanisms, a phase-position modulation (P-PM) technology is proposed to improve the communication rate. To overcome the intersymbol interference problem caused by the propagation characteristics of Lamb waves, a phase-position sparse reconstruction strategy is proposed for demodulation, which is more convenient and accurate compared with the conventional cross-correlation method. It should be noted that the maximum bit rate without bit error reaches 830.48 kbps via P-PM parameter optimization, which is 8.3 times higher than that of
on
–
off
keying modulation approach under the same experimental conditions. Finally, distributed communication experiments and simulations further verify the high accuracy, efficiency, and strong robustness of the proposed SDPC system, which can meet the communication requirements of enclosed metal structures.