A multisource energy harvesting platform for wireless methane sensor

Abstract

Sensors used for detecting combustible gases consume significant amounts of power. Energy management for these sensors can become an important issue when they are used as part of a wireless sensor network. This is because of the fact that wireless sensors are usually powered by batteries. Batteries have a finite lifetime and their replacement can take a considerable amount of time in a gas monitoring application where thousands of sensor nodes are deployed to measure the concentration of flammable gases. Moreover, the battery replacement procedure can turn into a more complicated task if the gas monitoring network is located in a harsh environment. Energy harvesting is a method which can increase the operation time of wireless gas sensor networks. In this article, we present a multisource harvesting circuit for a wireless gas sensor node. As for ambient sources, we have chosen solar and wind energy. Energy from ambient sources is stored in supercapacitors which have a capacity of 400 F. We prove that a catalytic gas sensor can operate for 2 days without batteries by using the developed scheme.