Data compression in wireless sensors network using MDCT and embedded harmonic coding

One of the major applications of wireless sensors networks (WSNs) is vibration measurement for the purpose of structural health monitoring and machinery fault diagnosis. WSNs have many advantages over the wired networks such as low cost and reduced setup time. However, the useful bandwidth is limited, as compared to wired networks, resulting in relatively low sampling. One solution to this problem is data compression which, in addition to enhancing sampling rate, saves valuable power of the wireless nodes. In this work, a data compression scheme, based on Modified Discrete Cosine Transform (MDCT) followed by Embedded Harmonic Components Coding (EHCC) is proposed to compress vibration signals. The EHCC is applied to exploit harmonic redundancy present is most vibration signals resulting in improved compression ratio. This scheme is made suitable for the tiny hardware of wireless nodes and it is proved to be fast and effective. The efficiency of the proposed scheme is investigated by conducting several experimental tests.