This paper develops an energy-aware and through- substrate sensor network using a Pulse Switching (PS) architecture for Structural Health Monitoring applications. Pulse Switching based protocols as developed in our prior work use single pulses instead of multi-bit packets for information delivery with ultra high energy-efficiency. Such packet-less networking is shown to be sufficient for event monitoring applications with binary sensing requirements. Pulse Switching using ultrasound, in particular, is well suited for communication through metal/composite substrates used in structures such as bridges, aircraft wings, etc. This paper presents a joint MAC- Routing architecture and its associated algorithms for Pulse Switching using an ultrasonic through- substrate physical layer. It also develops novel energy-aware protocol syntaxes in the PS domain for reliable operation in intermittently energy- constrained systems such as those powered by vibration energy harvesting. Experimental evaluation of a through-substrate pulse modem and ultrasonic pulse data-link is presented for demonstrating the feasibility of a pulse based ultrasonic physical layer. Using simulation experiments, it is shown that the proposed energy- aware mechanisms can offer a performance-enhanced through-substrate network that can be reliably used for structural health monitoring using energy harvested from structure vibrations.

This paper presents a novel pulse switching protocol framework for ultra light-weight wireless network applications. The key idea is to abstract a single Ultra Wide Band (UWB) pulse as the information switching granularity. Pulse switching is shown to be sufficient for on-off style event monitoring applications for which a monitored parameter can be modeled using a binary variable. Monitoring such events with conventional packet transport can be prohibitively energy-inefficient due to the communication, processing, and buffering overheads of the large number of bits within a packet's data, header, and preambles for synchronization. The paper presents a joint MAC-routing protocol architecture for pulse switching with a novel hop-angular event localization strategy. Through analytical modeling and simulation-based experiments it is shown that pulse switching can be an effective means for event networking, which can potentially replace the traditional packet transport when the information to be transported is binary in nature.

This paper presents a novel energy-efficient pulse switching protocol for ultra-light-weight cellular sensor network applications. The key idea is to abstract a single pulse, as opposed to multi-bit packets, as the information exchange mechanism. Pulse switching is shown to be sufficient for event monitoring applications with binary sensing in terms of cellular localization. Event monitoring with conventional packet transport can be prohibitively energy-inefficient due to the communication, processing, and buffering overheads of the large number of bits within a packet's data, header, and preambles. The paper presents a joint MAC and Routing architecture for pulse switching with novel cellular event localization. Through simulation experiments, it is shown that pulse switching can be an effective means for event based networking, which can potentially replace packet transport when the information to be transported is binary in nature.

This paper presents a novel energy-efficient pulse switching protocol for ultra light-weight wireless network applications. The key idea is to abstract a single pulse, as opposed to multi-bit packets, as the information exchange mechanism. Pulse switching is shown to be sufficient for event sensing applications with binary sensing. Event sensing with conventional packet transport can be prohibitively energy-inefficient due to the communication, processing, and buffering overheads of the large number of bits within a packet's data, header, and preambles. The paper presents a joint MAC-Routing architecture for pulse switching with a novel hop-angular event localization. Through simulation experiments, it is shown that pulse switching can be an effective means for event based networking, which can potentially replace the packet transport when the information to be transported is binary in nature.

This paper presents a novel energy-efficient pulse switching protocol for ultra light-weight wireless network applications. The key idea is to abstract a single pulse, as opposed to multi-bit packets, as the information exchange mechanism. Pulse switching is shown to be sufficient for event and target tracking applications with binary sensing. Target tracking with conventional packet transport can be prohibitively energy-inefficient due to the communication, processing, and buffering overheads of the large number of bits within a packet's data, header, and preambles. The paper presents a joint MAC and Routing architecture for pulse switching with a novel hop-angular event localization. Through analytical modeling and simulation experiments, it is shown that pulse switching can be an effective means for event based networking, which can potentially replace the packet transport when the information to be transported is binary in nature.