RF Powered Gas Wireless Sensor Node for Smart Applications

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) paradigm has been applied to a high number of monitoring and control applications. However, the constraint of WSN energy resources imposes restrictions on its truly ubiquitous and long-term deployments. We address the problem of autonomous long-term operation of a gas wireless sensor by employing the far-field RF energy harvesting technology at 900 MHz in the power range from −20 dBm to 10 dBm. The node takes regular CH4 or CO measurements and communicates the data to a wireless network coordinator at 2.4 GHz. Experimental results demonstrate that the optimized energy consumption of WSN, as well as energy harvesting of at least 1 mW (0 dBm) of ambient RF signal, ensure the ‘perpetual’ operation of WSN.

Keywords

• gas sensing
• power management
• RF harvesting
• sensor network