Renewable energy-harvested sensor systems for air quality monitoring

Abstract

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) devoted to environmental monitoring has preponderantly assumed the adoption of a portable and limited energy source, (e.g. lithium, alkaline, NiMH batteries), to support the sensor functionalities. The usage of environmental resources as energy booster is now rising up as a workable energy source dedicated to embedded and wireless computing systems where manual replacement of hundreds or even thousands of batteries on a regular basis is not practical. Consequently, substantial research efforts have been spent on designing energy-efficient smart sensor nodes and networks to maximize the lifetime of WSNs. However, in air quality monitoring systems sensors are required to operate for much longer durations (like years or even decades) after they are deployed. Following the above approach this paper presents SENNO (SENsor NOde), a renewable energy-harvested sensor node that intelligently manages energy transfer for continuous operation without human intervention during air quality monitoring. This paper discusses the challenges of designing an autonomous system powered by ambient energy harvesting. Preliminary results show that, the presented approach could effectively report and trace air quality levels.