Novel wireless sensor system based on power-over-fiber technique

Abstract

In this paper, we develop a novel wireless sensor system based on power-over-fiber technique, to realize a flexible distributed sensing over a middle distance, especially under extreme environments like high voltage, strong magnetic field, flammable and explosive occasion. In this system, the optical energy out of a high power laser in the base-station is transmitted via a fiber and then converted into the electrical energy by a photovoltaic power converter in the remote unit. This optically power-supplied remote unit operates as the coordinator in the wireless sensor network (WSN) at the remote site, and exchanges the sensing information with the base station via another fiber. In this way, the sensing information can be collected by WSN at the remote site, and be transmitted over a middle distance with the fiber. In order to improve the power supply ability of PPC, a maximum power point tracking technique is applied and more than 80% of PPC's maximum output power can be extracted. Moreover, to reduce the power consumption of the remote unit and sensor nodes, a simple and stable low-power communication protocol is designed. This novel sensor system can collect, transmit, and process the sensing information over 2 km's distance.