Agriwall: a surface to extend the wireless communication range of energy constrained sensing devices 

Agriwall: a surface to extend the wireless communication range of energy constrained sensing devices

By Nouman Ashraf

 

Although energy harvesting and wireless power transfer (WPT) have been explored for powering miniaturised and scattered sensors, many barriers remain to prevent widespread adoption.

One issue is that we cannot wirelessly transmit sensing data from a huge number of scattered sensors to a target device situated a long-distance away. This is due to the low energy efficiency of WPT technology and hence the limited energy available at sensing devices. Researchers at TSSG looked into the problem and wondered if rather than focusing on the transmitters, what if they could extend the communication range by building AgriWall: a wall with Omni-directional receiving antennas on the front side (facing the sensors) and longer-range directional antennas on the backside (facing the internet gateway). This wall will receive data from scattered sensors and relay it towards a distant server or internet gateway. It could be mounted on a moving tractor (Fig. 1) facilitating programmable processes that are placed in the signal path between the front and back sides of the wall, including such processes as amplification, data filtering, beam steering, and interference avoidance.

For more information please contact: Nouman Ashraf nashraf@tssg.org