Abstract. In this work, we developed and characterised an
autonomous micro-platform including several types of sensors, an advanced
power management unit (PMU) and radio frequency (RF) transmission capabilities. Autonomy
requires integration of an energy harvester, an energy storage device, a
PMU, ultra-low-power components (including sensors) and optimized software.
Our choice was to use commercial off-the-shelf components with low-power
consumption, low cost and compactness as selection criteria. For the
multi-purpose micro-platform, we choose to include the most common sensors
(such as temperature, humidity, luminosity, acceleration, etc.) and to
integrate them in one miniaturised autonomous device. A processing unit is embedded in the system. It allows for data acquisition from
each sensor individually, simple data processing, and storing and/or
wireless data transmission. Such a system can be used as stand-alone, with
an internal storage in a non-volatile memory, or as a node in a wireless
network, with bi-directional communication with a hub device where data
can be analysed further. According to specific application requirements,
system settings can be adjusted, such as the sampling rate, the resolution and the
processing of the sensor data. Parallel to full autonomous functionality, the low-power design enables us to
power the system by a small battery leading to a high degree of autonomy at a high
sampling rate. Therefore, we also developed an alternative battery-powered
version of the micro-platform that increases the range of applications. As
such, the system is highly versatile and due to its reduced dimensions, it
can be used nearly everywhere. Typical applications include the Internet of
Things, Industry 4.0, home automation and building structural health monitoring.
