Design of Monitor-and-control System for

Supermarket Fresh Area Based on ZigBee

Yang Chenwei, Liu Dao, Yao Dunping
Department of Measurement &Automation
Electrical Engineering College of
University of South China
Hengyang, Peoples Republic of China
Yangchenwei1985@163.com


Abstract=According to the status that most of supermarkets
cant effectively monitor the temperature and humidity around
food of fresh area in our country Currently, the thesis designs a
hierarchical topology central monitoring system based on ZigBee
wireless sensor network(WSN).In the system, the temperature
and humidity of surveyed area can be automatically monitored
and controlled. The monitoring nodes, with the CC2430 chip and
THS11, can collect and upload temperature and humidity data to
the Management Centre, which displays and processes the
data ,through the central node and the RS-232 interface. If the
collected data exceeds the threshold, it automatically starts the
alarm system and the regulating system; while the data is lower
than the standard value, regulating system could be
automatically shut down. Nodes work in the regular query power
saving mode. Power is obtained from button cells conversion
through MAX687.The results reveal that this WSN system has
the potential for field applications due to its low cost, low power
and flexible networking construction.

Keywords: ZigBee, Supermarket fresh area, Monitoring,
Wireless Sensor Network
I. INTRODUCTION
Currently, in the most of our supermarkets, fresh food
(meat, seafood, vegetables, fruit, etc) are put on the sale desk
by spreading through air conditioning at the end of the
counter or capping with ice cluster on the counter. These
methods are likely to cause fresh food heated at top side while
cold on the bottom side, temperature and humidity uneven,
which easily make the food go bad and cause economic losses.
Avoiding this, the staff of the supermarket have to add air
conditioning or replace ice cluster or spray mist from time to
time. Because of the lack of effective monitoring system,
adding air conditioning or spraying mist is manipulated by the
staff with experience. As fresh food is distributed wildly,
ambient temperature and humidity parameters of fresh food is
tested by hand-hold instrumentation regularly, which has
Yao Shengxing, Li Zuling
Department of Electrical &Information
Engineering of Hunan Institute of Technology
Hengyang, Peoples Republic of China
yaoshengxing@yahoo.com.cn
lizulin321@yahoo.com.cn


low efficiency, and is more difficult to achieve a real-time
automatic detection and intelligent control. This increases the
difficulty of the staffs work, and to some extent, increases
the difficulties of preservation for fresh food.
ZigBee technology is a two-way wireless network
technology of a short distance, low complexity, low power
and low-cost
[1]
.It is developed based on IEEE 802.15.4
wireless standards
[2]
.The nodes could be expanded up to
65536
[3]
.It also has the advantages of low power consumption.
Working in energy saving mode, the two batteries supply
energy up to 1 year and a half or so.
Based on these, monitoring project for Supermarket fresh
area is proposed and designed using ZigBee wireless sensor
network. The system is composed of node modules which are
based on high performance single chip CC2430 that integrates
ZigBee wireless network technology, and the modern
management center. By the implementation of platform of
software and hardware, the Management Center monitor
temperature and humidity of nodes located in different
parts of the fresh food area. In addition, the system has an
automatic alarm and regulation system. If the detected data
information exceeds the set threshold (for a variety of
preservation condition, the threshold may be set separately to
different fresh food. In the system, the threshold of
temperature of fresh meat is set as 4
[4]
),the host displays a
warning information on the screen, immediately sends a
warning instruction to the corresponding node to drive the
warning module to alarm ,so as to alert staff. And also, it
starts the regulation module and opens the solenoid valve to
automatically adjust temperature and humidity around the
food through air conditioning or water mist. While the
temperature or humidity reaches the preset standard value(in
the system, the temperature standard value of the meat is set
to 0
[4]
),the management center sends stop regulating
instruction to the corresponding node to close regulation
module, thus achieving the purpose of automatic detection
and intelligent control.

This work is supported by Research Study and Innovative
Experiment Project of College Students in Hunan Province
978-1-4244-8039-5/11/$26.00 2011 IEEE

II .HARDWARE CONFIGURATION
According to distribution of the fresh food in supermarket
and characteristics of ZigBee technology, the system uses the
tree topology structure, Figure 1 is the structure diagram of
the monitoring system. The system mainly consists of
monitoring nodes, router nodes, the control center node and
the Management Center (PC). All nodes are based on the
CC2430 that is a standards-compliant SOC ZigBee chip based
on IEEE802.15.4.Monitoring nodes are the leaf nodes of the
network, mainly responsible to collection data, sound and
light alarm and the temperature and humidity adjustment;
Router node is responsible to network management and data
forwarding, which can guarantee connectivity and robust for a
larger network; Central node is the Coordinator of ZigBee
Network, equivalent to the trunk node in the network,
responsible to management node, processing data and external
interfaces. PC host is the system's central controller, and
connected to the central node through the RS-232interface,
responsible to analysis, processing and conditioning control
data.

Fig.1 Structure diagram of supermarket fresh area monitor system
Supermarket fresh food areas generally are divided into
several small sale units, which are close to each other and the
number is big, which requires more sensor nodes. So
miniaturization and low-power are required for nodes to
facilitate the arrangement and save consumption. In addition,
for the sensor nodes are placed in a humid environment, in
order to work properly, a higher reliability of the hardware is
required.
In the system, the management center has a graphic
warning function. In addition, to increase the field alarm and
automatic control, monitoring nodes are equipped with alarm
module and regulation module.

A. Monitoring Node Design
Monitoring nodes are composed of the wireless transceiver
module (including the main chip CC2430, the clock unit and
the RF antenna unit), the sensor module, alarm module,
regulation module and power supply module. The schematic
is shown in Figure 2.CC2430 manufactured by TI, is the core
of the hardware module, which is a enhanced 8051MCU
integrated with RF transceiver
[5]
, working in 2.4GHz band,
low-voltage power supply (2.0 ~ 3.6v), low power
consumption (receiving data is 27mA, sending data is 25mA),
and the maximum transfer rate of 250KB/s.CC2430 clock unit
has two working modes, 32MHz to provide normal power
mode frequency, 32.768MHz for low-power operating
frequency. Antenna module consists of antenna feeder circuit
and impedance matching circuit, the maximum transmission
distance is up to 100m.

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Fig.2 Schematic of monitoring node
Sensor module is used to get the temperature and humidity,
signal conversion and processing. In the system, SHT11
sensor is produced by the Sensirion of Swiss, with I
2
C bus
interface and full digital calibration of the relative temperature
and humidity
[6]
.With accurate dew point measurement,
ultra-fast response time (less than 4s), ultra-small size
(7.5*5*2.5mm),the sensor can simultaneously measure the
relative humidity and temperature; and can be completely
submerged in water.
Power module consists of two 3V button batteries,
MAX687 chip, transistor FZT749 and other components. Two
3V coin cell batteries are collected to give 6V reference
voltage which is transformed to gain 3.3V operating voltage
by MAX687.FZT749 PNP transistor is used to expand the
flow of current, with the maximum output current up to
1A.Therefore,the node module could meet the demand of
electricity supply. To meet the saving energy demand, if the
output voltage is less than 2.96V, MAX687 can automatically
cut off the output voltage.
The P1_0 pin of the CC2430 is externally collected a
buzzer to form alarm module, when the sensor node detects a
alarm instruction, fed back from PC, P1_0 could generate a
switching signal to trigger the alarm buzzer.
Regulating module consists of the optocoupler TLP521,


driver transistor 2N5551,Relay DZ-122 and solenoid valve.
When P0_1 receives low trigger signal, the optocoupler starts
to work, NPN transistor is in a conduction state, a current
flows through the relay, then the solenoid valves starts to
work. Air conditioning or water flows through the open valve,
which adjusts the temperature or humidity. In the system, the
solenoid valve power is supplied by AC 220V.Relay and
optocoupler are 12V and 5V, which are gained by 220V
transformer, rectifier, filter, regulator.
B. Central Node and Routing Node Design
The wireless communication module of the two nodes is
same as the monitoring node, consisting of the wireless
transceiver module and the external circuit, as shown in figure
3. The difference from the monitoring node is that it s main
chip CC2430 connects with a serial communication interface
RS-232 through which Management Center communicates.
MAX3232 chip is selected, the working voltage is 3.3V,
which can achieve TTL level converter with two-way RS-232
level. The hardware module of router nodes are same as the
sensor node.

Fig.3 Structure diagram of center node

III. SOFTWARE DESIGN

The modular design of software is used. The main
module is divided into upper and lower machine module.
Upper machine module is the management center module, the
lower machine module is ZigBee node module which includes
the sensor module, the central node module, and routing node
module. In normal conditions of temperature and humidity,
the whole system works in timing query mode. Only when
the monitoring nodes receive a query command, they will
upload the collected data, and the other most of the time they
will be in energy saving state. This article will discuss the
software design for the host computer module, monitoring
node module and central node module.
A. Software Design of PC Module
PC is the system management center, and the work flow
chart is shown in Figure 4. After the system is powered, the
host sends wake-up instructions to each node via RS-232 bus,
to wake the nodes from the close state. If success, each nodes
will send a response message to the management center
through the center node. After confirming that the nodes have
been waked up, Management Centre will send a query
instruction to each node every 1 minute, which checks
whether the node works normally. And at the same time, PC
sends a read data instruction to the node to read the node data.
After receiving the data, management center automatically
records and displays data from monitoring nodes, also
compares with the threshold. If a monitoring node data are
greater than the threshold, the corresponding display bar of
node appears warning message. Also PC will send a warning
instruction to the node. Then it will receive real-time data
from the node and ceaselessly compare with the set standard
value ,if the data is less than the standard value, PC will sent a
stop regulating instruction to the corresponding node to
automatically turn off regulator module.

Fig.4 Flow Chart of the Management Center
B. Software Design of Monitoring Node Module
Monitoring node is the terminal node of the network, and
its work flow chart shown in Figure 5.After the node is waked
up, it will automatically initialize hardware and be
self-organized into ZigBee networks, and then read the
instructions from the central node. If it reads the query
instruction, it will collect the data and send it and its address
to the host through the central node; If it receives the alarm
instruction, it will immediately start the alarm module to
remind staff, start the regulation module, and start air or water
valves to automatically adjust the temperature and humidity


around the food through the relay to open the solenoid valve.
After successfully starting regulating module, the alarm
module will be shut down. It will send the data information to
the control center every 10 seconds. If it receives the stop
regulating instruction, it will immediately close the regulator
module. Nodes are in energy-saving sleep state in other time.

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Fig.5 Flow chart of monitoring nodes
C. Software Design of Central Node Module and
Routing Node Module

Fig.6 Flow chart of center nod
Central node is a connection point between the ZigBee
network and the management center, playing Gateway role.
The workflow is shown in Figure6.After the node wake-up
initialization, the node is waiting to receive information,
which may be instructions from the management center or
also may be data in other nodes. If a instruction, the central
node will parse the command information, and then
instruction is sent to the designated node, when receiving the
data information from other nodes, central node will send
them to management center.
Routing node module in this system is mainly used to
enhance the network monitorings coverage and stability. The
main program essentially is similar with the central node, so it
is not repeated here.

IV. CONCLUSIONS

Simulation tests of the system were implemented through
the arrangement of 12 monitoring nodes, two routing nodes, a
central node and a central host in a local supermarkets fresh
meat sale counter. By Field testing, super-fresh meat sale
counters temperature is 3.5or so, humidity 78% or so, the
communication distance of the monitoring node and routing
node is 23m or so. Within the 15m range, even when there is
interference of people walking around the supermarket,
communication system, alarm system and regulation system
still work correctly. As more points can be monitored, with
more flexibility node layout, lower cost and with a real-time
display and automatic alarm, adjustment function, the system
can achieve reliable and efficient wireless intelligent
monitoring for supermarket fresh food, which creates a
certain condition for modern management of the supermarket.
V. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We wish to thank professors Tan Yaogeng and Li Lanjun of
the department of Measurement &Automation at University
of South China for their encouragement and support on our
project.

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