Wireless sensor networking (WSN) technology is gaining importance in nuclear industry and its related applications. This wider acceptance of WSN can be attributed to its easy and fast deployment, reduction in cable cost, increase of system redundancy in critical applications of nuclear reactor and ease of maintenance of rotating equipment. A WSN node deployed in and around nuclear reactor may encounter gamma radiation dose, especially during some accidental conditions. Thus, before deploying nodes in radiation prone area, its radiation withstanding capability should be known. In this paper, we discuss about experiments done to irradiate the WSN nodes with two different setups: discontinuous low dose rate setup and continuous high dose rate setup. It has been inferred that based on the radiation source intensity and level of dose rate, the radiation withstanding limit of WSN nodes varies significantly. Also, based upon experiments we observed that during irradiation, a chip based integrated circuit performs more efficiently and fails later compared to discrete component based circuit. Also, we have done experimentation to radiation harden the WSN nodes at enclosure level. Testing has been done with different materials and varying thickness enclosures to increase the radiation dose-withstand-threshold of WSN node. Keywords: Wireless sensor networking, gamma radiation, CMOS technology, thermo-luminescent dosimeter (TLD)Cite this Article Vinita Daiya, Sandhya Rani G, Jemimah Ebenezer, et al. Experimental Study on Radiation Immunity of In-House Developed WSN Nodes. Recent Trends in Sensor Research & Technology. 2016; 3(3): 27–35p.
