Self-Powered ZigBee Wireless Sensor

Nodes for Railway Condition Monitoring

 ABSTRACT
• A track-borne energy transducer is a smart device for harvesting energy of trains or rail
transportation systems.

• The proposed hardware prototype consists of a ZigBee coordinator at road-side and a series of
sensors connected to a ZigBee end device at rail-side.

• The ZigBee end device is powered by the magnetic levitation energy harvester and communicated
wirelessly with the ZigBee coordinator.

• The magnetic levitation oscillator is selected due to its broad-band response characteristics.

• The results indicate a peak–peak output voltage of 2.3 V under the condition that the vehicle
travels over the rail-borne device at the speed of 105 km/h.
 INTRODUCTION
• Rail transport, as a means of conveyance of passenger and cargo, plays an important
role in our daily life.

• The building of rail infrastructure has experienced a sustainable growth in the past
decade, especially in some developing countries.

• However, in remote area it is difficult to ensure power supply of rail-side monitoring

equipment because wired power supply is not available for railways deployed in
these locations.
 Cont….
• If we use wireless power supply such as batteries, it is also a big challenge for the
maintenance and replacement of batteries in remote or inaccessible locations.

• It is therefore necessary to develop a new energy strategy called self-powered

wireless sensor network for railway condition monitoring.

• This technology contributes to resolving the power supply problems of rail-side

monitoring devices and benefits the development of Internet of Things (IOT) in
the area of intelligent transportation.
 EXISTING SYSTEM

• The recent systems cover more than one-third of its annual twelve billion
kilowatt-hour energy requirement for the railway network with renewable
sources by 2020.

• The saved energy is capable of powering wireless sensor networks (WSNs),

which can be used for monitoring the railway infrastructure such as bridges,
turnout, rail tracks, cuttings and tunnels, and track beds.
 DISADVANTAGES

• Power supply problem of rail-side equipment.

• Money-consuming to deploy the railway monitoring system

 PROPOSED SYSTEM

• Thus here we proposed a hardware prototype consists of a ZigBee coordinator at

road-side and a series of sensors connected to a ZigBee end device at rail-side.

• The ZigBee nodes are powered by the Lithium-batteries and thus extends the
operating time of overall system.

• The results indicate a peak–peak output voltage of 2.3 V under the condition that
the vehicle travels over the rail-borne device at the speed of 105 km/h.
 ADVANTAGES
• Compared with other wireless personal area networks (WPANs) such as Bluetooth and
Wi-Fi, the ZigBee specification intended to be simpler, less expensive and consume less
power.

• The transmission distances are limited to 10–100 meters line of- sight and the ZigBee
devices can also transmit data over long distances by establishing a mesh network of
intermediate devices to reach more distant ones.
BLOCK DIAGRAM
TRANSMITTER SECTION

Energy Protection
Transducer BATTERY
Circuit

TEMPERATURE LCD

ADC ARDUINO
HUMIDITY
UNO
ATMEGA328 MAX232
ACCELEROMETER

ZIGBEE
Coordinator
 RECEIVER SECTION

ZIGBEE
BATTERY Coordinator PC Section
 EXPLANATION
• The proposed hardware prototype consists of a ZigBee coordinator at road-side
and a series of sensors (Accelerometer, temperature sensor, humidity sensor, and
infrared detector) connected to a ZigBee end device at rail-side.
• The ZigBee end device is powered by the magnetic levitation energy harvester and
is communicated wirelessly with the ZigBee coordinator.
• The energy harvester does not power the ZigBee nodes directly; instead, it powers
the Lithium-batteries and thus extends the operating time of overall system
• The ZigBee end device together with the magnetic levitation harvester was
mounted to the rail web on one section of railway track.
 Cont….
• The ZigBee nodes collected the temperature, the humidity, and the acceleration of
railway track and communicated wirelessly with the ZigBee coordinator.

• The ZigBee coordinator transferred the data to a laptop computer, which can display
the signals profile and store the data to a log file.

• To record and observe the profile of the generated voltage of magnetic levitation
harvester, an oscilloscope (Tektronix TDS2004C) with a voltage probe of 10X
attenuation was connected to the magnetic levitation device.
Cont….
• The sampling data from the oscilloscope were recorded and transferred to a
local computer for subsequent analysis.

• The oscilloscope served as a data sampling device and was connected to the
laptop with LabVIEW Signal Express software.

• In this way, we can activate the auto trigger/record mode and realize continuous
data sampling. The data were stored on the laptop’s hard drive.
 CONCLUSION
• This paper investigated the possibility of establishing a self-powered wireless sensor network by

integrating the techniques of ZigBee stack protocol and energy harvesting.

• The target was aimed at the railway condition monitoring.

• Three types of track-borne electromagnetic harvester were compared and we found that energy

harvesting by magnetic levitation is suitable for powering the ZigBee end device due to its wide

frequency response.

• A hardware platform was developed and tested, indicating the feasibility of the proposed approach.

• Further investigation is current undertaken for evaluating the long-term performance of the self-

powered ZigBee sensor nodes for the railway condition monitoring.