1 ASCENT: Airliner Sensor and Cabin Environment NeTwork

This paper describes a wireless sensor network prototype with the use of reconfigurable hardware for airliner cabin environment research. Commercial airplane passengers and crews breathe a mixture of outside and re-circulated air, similar to many homes and offices. But the cabin environment is unique, due to the proximity of the passengers, the need for cabin pressurization, the low humidity, and the potential for exposure to common chemical and biological contaminants, all in an enclosed structure. This paper describes the use of an embedded processor core, reconfigurable hardware, and microcontroller in designing a scalable wireless network sensor system backbone for monitoring the aircraft cabin