Battery-Free and Energy-Effective RFID Sensor Tag for Health Monitoring in Smart Grid

Abstract

Health monitoring and management of power transformer is one of significant issues for the whole smart grid. This paper proposed an energy-effective approach utilizing surrounding electro-magnetic energy both from power lines and RFID readers, the design architecture of RFID sensor tag and its self-powered circuit were illustrated in detail, the recommended parameters have also be provided and verified after the theoretical derivation of the energy harvester. The experimental results from our realized prototype show that the proposed method is reliable and robust enough for real applications on the online fault diagnosis of power transformer winding, with more than 80% successful ratio while 13 m maximum communication distance without any auxiliary battery.