Open this publication in new window or tab >>2024 (English)In: 2024 13TH MEDITERRANEAN CONFERENCE ON EMBEDDED COMPUTING, MECO 2024, IEEE, 2024, p. 394-397Conference paper, Published paper (Refereed)
Abstract [en]
Underground tunnels contain toxic, hazardous gases or lack oxygen. Therefore, providing the safety of personnel working in underground tunnels by monitoring oxygen, combustible or toxic gases is important. Wearable sensor networks are used in various applications such as oxygen monitoring. Some wearable sensor networks for gas monitoring are powered by batteries. Given the finite lifetime of batteries and the long term stay of underground personnel in these places, e.g. as a result of incidents, having a wearable sensor node with a stable power supply is crucial to conducting oxygen monitoring and notifying the emergency conditions. In order to provide a battery-less operation of the wearable sensor node, one approach is to use ambient energy sources. Considering the fact that the human body can survive only a few minutes without oxygen, the goal of our work is to investigate whether the power generated as a result of temperature difference between the body and ambient air is sufficient to power a sensor node for conducting oxygen detection every 20 seconds. Therefore, we present the development of a wearable sensor node for oxygen detection. The platform consists of a thermoelectric generator (TEG) converter, a sensing circuit for an electrochemical gas sensor and a power management circuit. Our experimental results with our platform indicate that a temperature difference of 6 degrees C between the body and the ambient air and storing the harvested energy in a capacitor ensure the autonomous operation of the wearable sensor node for measurements and alarm actuation conducted every 15 seconds. The period between the measurements could even become less than 15 seconds in underground tunnels as the temperature difference increases.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
IEEE, 2024
Series
Mediterranean Conference on Embedded Computing, ISSN 2377-5475
Keywords
Wearable sensor node, oxygen monitoring, energy harvesting, underground tunnels
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-537574 (URN)10.1109/MECO62516.2024.10577893 (DOI)001268606200074 ()979-8-3503-8756-8 (ISBN)979-8-3503-8757-5 (ISBN)
Conference
13th Mediterranean Conference on Embedded Computing (MECO), JUN 11-14, 2024, Budva, MONTENEGRO
Funder
Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research
2024-09-052024-09-052024-09-05Bibliographically approved