Potential Non-NASA commercial include the Automotive Industry, Civil Engineering structures, Chemical and Biological sensing and detection, and the oil industry. The utilization of a wireless SAW device for remote monitoring of hostile environments will become not only technically feasible but also economically feasible based on the extremely low cost associated with the SAW device technology. The coded passive sensors and the wireless interrogator acting as the active portion of the link enables an architecture which can support the monitoring of possibly hundreds of sensors per interrogator. In the automotive industry, the wireless SAW can be deployed as pressure sensors in tires, liquid contaminant sensors in the fuel and oil supplies, temperature and pressure sensors within the engine, and carbon monoxide sensors within the vehicle. In the civil Engineering and transportation industry, highway safety information could be deployed with each informational sign or within construction areas to alert and inform drivers. Wireless, passive, low cost, rugged, Surface Acoustic Wav, Orthogonal Frequency Coded sensors and interrogator systems have multiple NASA applications. The lightweight, extremely low profile SAW sensors can be installed on the leading edges of aircraft and spacecraft wings to monitor temperature, pressure, and stress/strain in a wireless fashion. . Additional NASA applications include acceleration sensing for monitoring vehicular acceleration and vehicular vibration, vehicular docking, rotation and directional sensing, tilt control, and fall detection. Additional NASA applications include the monitoring of structural integrity, extreme temperature, extreme pressure, toxic or lethal environments. Airframe safety and the required/planned maintenance process are also potential applications. This technology can allow the feasible embedment of sensors in key structural components of an airframe for persistent monitoring both during flight and as a post flight analysis. Critical states of air flight could be instrumented without the increased cost of weight associated with fiber optic or wired communication.
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