Development of low cost wireless radiation monitoring station using GSM network

SMS or Short Message Service is a mean of GSM wireless communication that allow text messages to be sent to and from mobile cell phones. While SMS communication is mainly utilized at personal level or person to person basis; the usage of SMS can be extended into nuclear application specifically in radiation monitoring. This paper explains the development of a wireless station assembled by using a recycled Siemens M50 cell phone as substitutes to GSM modem, a PIC micro controller, and MINT-ISG home made digital survey meter at the remote transmitting site. While at the receiving end; an online monitoring system is set-up by using a Bluetooth enabled cell phone, a Bluetooth dongle, and a PC with Labview 8.0 software written as the Data logger which also served as the PC-Bluetooth interface platform. Wireless station at the remote area operates by continuously sending SMS in every 3 minutes to a predefined cellular number located at the monitoring system. The SMS consists of 6 data which individually is a survey meter readings recorded at each 30 seconds duration. At the receiver, Data logger program will retrieve the SMS from the cell phone via Bluetooth and extract the original 6 readings to be displayed on PC. The system has been successfully tested to detect and log radiation data for extended period of time. (Author)