Emergency-Awareness System for Vibration Sensing, Monitoring, and Safety

An emergency-awareness system for vibration sensing, monitoring, and safety is proposed in this paper. The presented electronic system comprises a central monitoring unit and three vibration-sensing modules. They are connected to an Ethernet network for rapidly transmitting the monitored data and issuing command signals. Each vibration-sensing module consists of a compact 3-axis micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) accelerometer and three high-resolution 24-bit sigma-delta analogue-to-digital converters (ADCs). The proposed sensor modules can be attached to infrastructure and machines (e.g., toxic-gas valves, seismic monitors) in industrial factories. Upon detecting a tiny 4-gal vibration from a high-resolution sensing module, it immediately reports to the central monitoring unit via the network and issues commands to shut off the gas valves. Because the presented system leverages high internet transmission speeds (much faster than vibration waves propagating through infrastructure) and high-resolution sensor modules, safety measures (e.g., switching off toxic-gas valves) can be implemented immediately before the arrival of the vibration waves.