Wireless Sensors Networks in Harsh Environments for High Precision Temperature Monitoring of Fermenting Fluids

The paper presents an efficient solution to monitor in real time, uniformly and continuously the temperature evolution in vats hosting for must fermentation. The environment is characterized by strong temperature gradients with fast evolutions, and this justifies the need for a pervasive and dense measurement. Inside the vats several mechanical operations are continuously performed, and these may cause disruptions to cables of any form. Despite these characteristics, which might require the deployment of wireless sensor nodes, the environment is difficult to the radio propagation and aggressive for all electronic parts. Moreover, recently the wine makers would like to follow the temperature evolution with precisions below 0.8 degree Farenheit, and this requires the construction of sensors with improved analogue/digital conversion. All these requirements have been matched by setting up a wireless sensor network solution in the 865/915 MHz bandwidths, which uses PT100. The solution has been tested during the fermentation of the 2014 vintage in Montalcino, Italy.