Integrated Wheel Sensor Communication using ESP32 -- A Contribution towards a Digital Twin of the Road System

Abstract

While current onboard state estimation methods are adequate for most driving and safety-related applications, they do not provide insights into the interaction between tires and road surfaces. This paper explores a novel communication concept for efficiently transmitting integrated wheel sensor data from an ESP32 microcontroller. Our proposed approach utilizes a publish-subscribe system, surpassing comparable solutions in the literature regarding data transmission volume. We tested this approach on a drum tire test rig with our prototype sensors system utilizing a diverse selection of sample frequencies between 1 Hz and 32 000 Hz to demonstrate the efficacy of our communication concept. The implemented prototype sensor showcases minimal data loss, approximately 0.1% of the sampled data, validating the reliability of our developed communication system. This work contributes to advancing real-time data acquisition, providing insights into optimizing integrated wheel sensor communication.