# The Latest Advances in Wireless Communication in Aviation, Wind Turbines and Bridges
## 4 WSN Systems in Different Applications: Aerospace, Bridge Structures, and Wind Turbines
### WSN in Aerospace  
The improvement of efficiency and flexibility while reducing weight, fuel consumption, and maintenance costs in aircraft can be obtained by the 'Fly-By-Wireless' paradigm based on wireless communication. The complexity of avionics communication architecture increases with the increasing number of interconnected subsystems and the growing number of data exchanges. In order to follow this trend, the current aircraft architecture of the next generation, including the A380, A400M or A350, comprises a high-speed backbone network based on AFDX (Avionics Full Duplex Switched Ethernet) to connect critical subsystems. Subsequently, it is possible to connect each specific avionics subsystem directly to an associated sensor/actuator network that is based on a low-speed data bus such as ARINC429 and CAN. Despite the fact that this architecture meets the major requirements, it also brings integration costs resulting from a large number of wires and connectors. To give an example, it is estimated that the costs associated with cabling during manufacture and installation are $2000 per kilogram, which accounts for $14 million for an aircraft such as the A320 and $50 million for a B787 in terms of the total cost. In particular, there is approximately 500 km of cables used in the new generation A380 aircraft. Apart from the costs, avionics connections are still subject to structural failures and fire hazards, which significantly reduces not only their reliability but also their maintenance costs. In order to solve these emerging problems, the implementation of avionics without cables will not only significantly improve aircraft performance and reliability, but it will also lower integration, fuel consumption, as well as maintenance costs [31].  
Figure 4: Wireless sensor node architecture [30].  
In aviation, many different standards can be used for wireless communication between sensors, both open and commercial. According to [31], networks which are based on the IEEE 802.11 standard are not designed for in-flight transmission, but the IEEE 802.15.4 standards are much better. The authors emphasize that the new WAIC standard technology designed only for the aviation industry will significantly increase communication over short distances, improving communication between sensors and aircraft systems.  
For a wireless network in airplanes, good bandwidth is required to send and collect large amounts of data collected by the sensors. Looking at the capacity of various wireless technologies described in Table 1, most of the protocols based on the 802.15.4 standard operate at speeds up to 250 Kbps with low power consumption. If you consider receiving a packet and processing it by a microcontroller, this speed can drop by up to half. It is also necessary to take into account the assumptions of sensor networks. Usually, they do not have the possibility of direct connection to the base station, which can further reduce the transmission speed, thus weakening the whole network's reliability [31].