Devices, such as probes, sensors transducers, cameras and the like, are used across a wide range of industries to monitor the operating conditions of industrial assets. For example, an industrial facility may include any number of essential assets, such as various types of machinery, and a plurality of supporting assets, such as pumps, motors, blowers, heat exchangers, fans and similar assets, that impact the process flowing through the essential assets. Such essential and/or supporting assets are often communicatively coupled to a variety of different devices to measure and/or sense the vibration, temperature, pressure, relative position and other operating parameters of the assets to ensure their proper operation and to appropriately schedule maintenance work.
To decrease the costs of installing sensing devices throughout a large industrial facility, the devices are often configured as wireless sensors that permit data captured by the sensing devices to be wirelessly transmitted to a central server for subsequent analysis. However, once installed within an industrial facility, it is often the case that the exact location of each wireless sensor is forgotten, misplaced and/or difficult to obtain. This is particularly true with regard to very large industrial facilities that may include hundreds or even thousands of wireless sensors dispersed throughout the facility. As such, when one or more of the wireless sensors need to be serviced or otherwise located, a substantial amount of time and money can be wasted attempting to find each particular wireless sensor.
Accordingly, a system that provides for the efficient determination of the location of wireless sensors would be welcomed.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds