Microwave-sensor-node integrated into a short-range wireless sensor network

Microwave-sensor-node integrated into a short-range wireless sensor network

Blog Article

Abstract This paper presents the first microwave-sensor-node integrated into a short-range wireless sensor network based on ZigBee technology.The node includes an analog front-end circuit, a Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave generator, an Analog-to-Digital-Converter module, a transceiver, a power unit, a processing unit and a new one-port dielectric permittivity Stained Glass Suncatcher sensor which is able to measuring the separation of structural cracks by the reflection coefficient measured in microwave frequencies.The analog front-end is composed of a pair of power dividers, an isolator and a mixer.The dielectric permittivity sensor is based on a patch antenna of variable length.The processing unit and transceiver are implemented with an Arduino UNO Fan Shop - Team Canada - Clothing and an XBee module respectively.

Additionally, the methodology for data processing is presented and the results of the measurement of a synthetic crack are presented.The results show that the system was successfully implemented with a sensitivity of 0.07 GHz/mm, for an opening range of between 0 and 5 mm and for a frequency range ranging from 2.782 GHz to 3.131 GHz.

It is important to mention that the measurement was done remotely, placing the sensor 3 m from the client PC.