Environmental monitoring in grain

It is shown that Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are capable of deployment in industrial processes which present particularly hostile RF environments. The techniques which have been developed have generic applicability, but in this work they are focused on the monitoring of grain storage. Determination of the environmental conditions in a grain silo is challenged by the dielectric properties of the grain and the multi-path nature of RF propagation in the silo. These challenges apply to both the inter-node WSN communication and node positioning. The methods adopted to meet these challenges and significant results achieved are presented.