LoRaWAN Battery-Free Wireless Sensors Network Designed for Structural Health Monitoring in the Construction Domain

Abstract

This paper addresses the practical implementation of a wireless sensors network designed to actualize cyber-physical systems that are dedicated to structural health monitoring applications in the construction domain. This network consists of a mesh grid composed of LoRaWAN battery-free wireless sensing nodes that collect physical data and communicating nodes that interface the sensing nodes with the digital world through the Internet. Two prototypes of sensing nodes were manufactured and are powered wirelessly by using a far-field wireless power transmission technique and only one dedicated RF energy source operating in the ISM 868 MHz frequency band. These sensing nodes can simultaneously perform temperature and relative humidity measurements and can transmit the measured data wirelessly over long-range distances by using the LoRa technology and the LoRaWAN protocol. Experimental results for a simplified network confirm that the periodicity of the measurements and data transmission of the sensing nodes can be controlled by the dedicated RF source (embedded in or just controlled by the associated communicating node), by tuning the radiated power density of the RF waves, and without any modification of the software or the hardware implemented in the sensing nodes.

ZigBee Radio Frequency (RF) Performance on Raspberry Pi 3 for Internet of Things (IoT) based Blood Pressure Sensors Monitoring

“…ECG has more complex output than Blood Pressure, ECG placement is also in patients 'chest and sensor placement which is at several points on patients' chest, while blood pressure only takes on the base of the wrist or wrist tip. Gaël Loubet, Alexandru Takacs, Ethan Gardner, Andrea De Luca, Florin Udrea and Daniela Dragomirescu [16], using LoRa as a Wireless Sensor Network device to monitor patient health, LoRAWAN is Vehicular-based communication [17]. This LoR works on the 868 MHz ISM frequency radio.…”

Materials Communicating with the BIM: Aims and First Results of the McBIM Project

“…The first implementations and tests in the air were performed regarding wireless measurement. The main obtained results are available in [4] and [5].…”

“…Before embedding this network in the reinforced concrete, it has been developed for tests in the air. First, a sensing node prototype presented in Figure 5 and in [4,5] has Figure 4 Schematic diagram of the architecture of the proposed network been designed. It is wireless, battery-free and wirelessly powered through a far-field wireless power transmission (WPT) system in order to be autonomous during the entire lifetime of the concrete element.…”

“…into concrete). However, although demonstrated theoretically in [9], no implementation of LoRaWAN SN powered by a far-field WPT approach was provided until [5]. Contrary to near-field WPT solutions, e.g.…”

Advanced Monitoring Systems Based on Battery-Less Asset Tracking Modules Energized through RF Wireless Power Transfer

“…Where feasible, such as in applications involving low duty-cycle sensors, it is far more preferable to implement battery-less devices, with the evident advantage of rendering them non-disposable, virtually unlimited in lifetime, more cost-efficient, and usable in environments where batteries can be dangerous [41][42][43][44][45]. For these reasons, battery-less solutions are gaining momentum [43,[46][47][48][49], with engineers increasingly opting for regenerative energy harvesting (EH), including RF EH and WPT. Implementing efficient WPT and RF EH is not a simple task, because even though RF energy offers high pervasiveness and the ability to be directed to out-of-sight locations, its power conversion efficiency (PCE) remains very low.…”