As air travel starts to pick up again, airports are adjusting to handling traffic levels last seen before COVID-19. These facilities will be pressed to keep pace with the uptick of air travelers and growing crowds amid the industry changes of the last 2 years. It is a challenge for airport operators to move the increasing volume of passengers through congested facilities while delivering a secure, sanitary, and comfortable customer experience.
One way to ensure critical uptime while handling the growth and complexity of airport infrastructure management is to use the right kind of key sensors for operational monitoring. In an international airport, sensors are installed in key areas of customer interface such as baggage handling systems, potable water cabinets, passenger escalators, and walkways.
For the baggage handling system, the epGateway by Embedded Planet is used with sensor nodes to provide constant data communication and to trigger alarms to facility management when they fall outside of set parameters. By using early warning signals, the facilities team can minimize equipment downtime and ensure a smooth flow of operations and customer satisfaction.
The escalators and walkways are critical to the movement of passengers throughout the airport. When devices wear out or experience faults, the flow of passengers becomes jammed and can have significant effects on airport operations. These areas are monitored using the epGateway system to predict equipment failure and understand fault conditions. Motors, actuators, gearboxes and other critical components are monitored for vibration, noise, hydraulic fluid leaks, and temperature via installed sensors.
Providing further benefit to the airport, the epGateway system also monitors the potable water closet. The reliable integrity of this system can have a significant impact on aircraft on-time metrics and customer satisfaction levels. Sensors are installed to monitor temperature, flow, leak detection, and other parameters for the potable water cabinet. By triggering an alert after a sensor reads an out-of-bounds value for a set parameter (such as below-freezing temperatures for a water line), facilities management can quickly respond to and resolve the issue.
The solution has been successfully implemented for a large Canadian international airport as well as for commercial building management providers, and has a wide scope to expand its usability to countless additional areas.
Please contact our team to learn more about how Embedded Planet can help deliver the best integrated connectivity solution for your needs.
Sensors include air quality, temperature, proximity, positions, moisture, flow, fluid leads and vibration.
Sensor connect directly to the Embedded Planet epGateway. The epGateway serves as a sensor hub for both wired and wireless sensors including epSensors. The epGateway can send data to Microsoft Azure, IMB Cloud and Amazon AWS. It also provides remote device management in s secure multi-tenant environment.
