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Chun Ho Wu 1,2 and Chun Kit Ng 2 and Lixing Wang 3 and G. T. S. Ho 2 and W. H. Ip 2 and J. Zhang 1,4
Academic Editor:Antonio Puliafito
1, School of Information Science & Technology, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510006, China
2, Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong
3, Institute of Cyber Physical Systems Engineering, College of Information Science and Engineering, Northeastern University, No. 3-11, Wenhua Road, Heping District, Shenyang 110819, China
4, School of Advanced Computing, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510006, China
Received 16 August 2014; Revised 12 March 2015; Accepted 16 March 2015; 7 April 2015
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
1. Introduction
Biological products refer to natural substances obtained from living organisms [1], which include blood, blood products, tissue, tissue products, organs, vaccines, microbial samples, and cellular specimens. Pharmaceutical products are drugs or medicines in traditional and modern medicine [2]. Both biological and pharmaceutical (B&P) products are critical and essential in many different areas, such as in medicine, health care, pharmacies, and biotechnology. However, B&P products are highly susceptible to variation of environmental factors, such as temperature, humidity, vibration, tilt, light, and atmospheric pollution. Traditional handling processes of these products in the supply chain are straightforward but have certain drawbacks, in which there is no real-time and continuous monitoring. Thus, unrecorded mishandling will eventually cause microbial or chemical contamination, an increase in the products' decomposition rate, and leakage if no timely rescue action is taken [3]. Low quality products will jeopardize the health and even the life of end users and also lead to other serious consequences, such as monetary loss and reputation damage. Therefore, there is a need for a real-time and comprehensive monitoring system to keep tracking of the state of the pedigree of B&P products in the supply chain. To fulfill the emerging need, this research proposes a wireless sensor network (WSN) based monitoring system to prevent faults and to enhance the supply chain visibility.
A WSN refers to a collection of sensor nodes with the capability of wireless communication [4]....