A Battery-Free Long-Range Wireless Smart Camera for Face Detection

Abstract

This paper presents a battery-free smart camera that combines tiny machine learning, long-range communication, power management, and energy harvesting. The smart sensor node has been implemented and evaluated in the field, showing both battery-less capabilities with a small-size photovoltaic panel and the energy efficiency of the proposed solution. We evaluated two different ARM Cortex-M4F microcontrollers, the Ambiq Apollo 3 that is an energy-efficient microcontroller, and a Microchip SAMD51 able to work in high radiation environments but with a higher power in active mode. Finally, a low power LoRa module provides the long-range wireless transmission capability. The tiny machine learning algorithm for face recognition has been optimized in terms of accuracy versus energy, achieving up to 97% accuracy recognizing five different faces. Experimental results demonstrated the capability of the developed sensor node to start from the cold start after 1 minute at a very low luminosity of 350 lux using a cm size flexible photovoltaic panels and work perpetually after the cold start.