I recently worked onboard a specialized shuttle tanker which was a temporary testbed for new technologies. We had the engine room wired for remote monitoring using 'motes' and wireless technology. This was in some extremes of temperature and often very high vibration situations. These wireless 'motes' were reasonably small and i believe have many future applications. It was mentioned that these would be made very small in the future and because they were powered from the vibration (can't remember the power source, piezo???) but anyway, it seems to me that these would be good for aircraft applications. Very light weight, self powered, and all feeding to a small group of pocket pc's (ipaq), which in turn downloaded to the central computer at predetermined intervals.
http://process.sensorsmag.com/sensor...15338&pageID=2 All clever stuff and fairly advanced stuff.
http://www.computerweekly.com/Articl...+shipshape.htm
