• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.139-144
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• 2022

Advanced tactile sensors are receiving significant attention in various industries such as extended reality, electronic skin, organic user interfaces, and robotics. The capabilities of advanced tactile sensors require a variety of functions, including position sensing, pressure sensing, and material recognition. Moreover, they should comsume less power and be bio-friendly with human contact. Recently, a tactile sensor based on the triboelectrification effect was developed. Triboelectric tactile sensors have the advantages of wide material availability, simple structure, and low manufacturing cost. Because they generate electricity by contact, they have low power consumption compared to conventional tactile sensors such as capacitive and piezoresistive. Furthermore, they have the ability to recognize the contact material as well as execute position and pressure sensing functions using the triboelectrification effect. The aim of this study is to introduce the progress of research on triboelectrification-based tactile sensors with various functions such as position sensing, pressure sensing and contact material recognition.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.602-611
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• 2019

The major drawbacks of magnetic resonant coupled wireless power transfer (WPT) to the embedded sensors on spindles are transmission instability and low efficiency of the transmission. This paper proposes a novel double-loop coil design for wirelessly charging embedded sensors. Theoretical and finite-element analyses show that the proposed coil has good transmission performance. In addition, the power transmission capability of the double-loop coil can be improved by reducing the radius difference and width difference of the transmitter and receiver. It has been demonstrated by analysis and practical experiments that a magnetic resonant coupled WPT system using the double-loop coil can provide a stable and efficient power transmission to embedded sensors.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.35-40
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• 2008

Low power bridge type micro gas sensors were fabricated by micro machining technology with TMAH (Tetra Methyl Ammonium Hydroxide) solution. The sensing devices with different heater materials such as metal and poly-silicon were obtained using CMOS (Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor) compatible process. The tellurium films as a sensing layer were deposited on the micro machined substrate using shadow silicon mask. The low power micro gas sensors showed high sensitivity to NO with high speed. The pure tellurium film used micro gas sensor showed good sensitivity than transition metal (Pt, Ti) used tellurium film.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.271-298
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• 2012

Researchers have made significant progress in recent years towards realizing effective structural health monitoring (SHM) utilizing wireless smart sensor networks (WSSNs). These efforts have focused on improving the performance and robustness of such networks to achieve high quality data acquisition and distributed, in-network processing. One of the primary challenges still facing the use of smart sensors for long-term monitoring deployments is their limited power resources. Periodically accessing the sensor nodes to change batteries is not feasible or economical in many deployment cases. While energy harvesting techniques show promise for prolonging unattended network life, low power design and operation are still critically important. This research presents the WiSeMote: a new, fully integrated ultra-low power wireless smart sensor node and a flexible base station, both designed for long-term SHM deployments. The power consumption of the sensor nodes and base station has been minimized through careful hardware selection and the implementation of power-aware network software, without sacrificing flexibility and functionality.

• Journal of Electrical Engineering and Technology
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.156-162
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• 2013

This paper measures the hot spot temperatures in a single-phase, 154 kV, 15/20 MVA power transformer filled with natural ester fluid using optical fiber sensors and compares them with those calculated by conventional heat run tests. A total of 14 optical fiber sensors were installed on the high-voltage and low-voltage windings to measure the hot spot temperatures. In addition, three thermocouples were installed in the transformer to measure the temperature distribution during the heat run tests. In the low-voltage winding, the hot spot temperature was $108.4^{\circ}C$, calculated by the conventional heat run test. However, the hot spot temperature measured using the optical fiber sensor was $129.4^{\circ}C$ between turns 2 and 3 on the upper side of the low-voltage winding. Therefore, the hot spot temperature of the low-voltage winding measured using the optical fiber sensor was $21.0^{\circ}C$ higher than that calculated by the conventional heat run test.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.509-525
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• 2018

Sensors and systems in Civionics technology play an important role for continuously facilitating real-time structure monitoring systems by detecting and locating damage to or degradation of structures. An advanced materials, design processes, long-term sensing ability of sensors, electromagnetic interference, sensor placement techniques, data acquisition and computation, temperature, harsh environments, and energy consumption are important issues related to sensors for structural health monitoring (SHM). This paper provides a comprehensive survey of various sensor technologies, sensor classes and sensor networks in Civionics research for existing SHM systems. The detailed classification of sensor categories, applications, networking features, ranges, sizes and energy consumptions are investigated, summarized, and tabulated along with corresponding key references. The current challenges facing typical sensors in Civionics research are illustrated with a brief discussion on the progress of SHM in future applications. The purpose of this review is to discuss all the types of sensors and systems used in SHM research to provide a sufficient background on the challenges and problems in optimizing design techniques and understanding infrastructure performance, behavior and current condition. It is observed that the most important factors determining the quality of sensors and systems and their reliability are the long-term sensing ability, data rate, types of processors, size, power consumption, operation frequency, etc. This review will hopefully lead to increased efforts toward the development of low-powered, highly efficient, high data rate, reliable sensors and systems for SHM.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.6 no.5_6
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• pp.689-709
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• 2010

In this paper, a low cost, low power but multifunctional wireless sensor node is presented for the impedance-based SHM using piezoelectric sensors. Firstly, a miniaturized impedance measuring chip device is utilized for low cost and low power structural excitation/sensing. Then, structural damage detection/sensor self-diagnosis algorithms are embedded on the on-board microcontroller. This sensor node uses the power harvested from the solar energy to measure and analyze the impedance data. Simultaneously it monitors temperature on the structure near the piezoelectric sensor and battery power consumption. The wireless sensor node is based on the TinyOS platform for operation, and users can take MATLAB$^{(R)}$ interface for the control of the sensor node through serial communication. In order to validate the performance of this multifunctional wireless impedance sensor node, a series of experimental studies have been carried out for detecting loose bolts and crack damages on lab-scale steel structural members as well as on real steel bridge and building structures. It has been found that the proposed sensor nodes can be effectively used for local wireless health monitoring of structural components and for constructing a low-cost and multifunctional SHM system as "place and forget" wireless sensors.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.225-238
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• 2010

We report on the development of a new technology for the fabrication of Micro-Electro-Mechanical-System (MEMS) strain sensors to realize a novel type of crackmeter for health monitoring of ageing civil infrastructures. The fabrication of micromachined silicon MEMS sensors based on a Silicon On Insulator (SOI) technology, designed according to a Double Ended Tuning Fork (DETF) geometry is presented, using a novel process which includes a gap narrowing procedure suitable to fabricate sensors with low motional resistance. In order to employ these sensors for crack monitoring, techniques suited for bonding the MEMS sensors on a steel surface ensuring good strain transfer from steel to silicon and a packaging technique for the bonded sensors are proposed, conceived for realizing a low-power crackmeter for ageing infrastructure monitoring. Moreover, the design of a possible crackmeter geometry suited for detection of crack contraction and expansion with a resolution of $10{\mu}m$ and very low power consumption requirements (potentially suitable for wireless operation) is presented. In these sensors, the small crackmeter range for the first field use is related to long-term observation on existing cracks in underground tunnel test sections.

• Journal of KIISE
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• v.41 no.10
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• pp.745-761
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• 2014

To address the problems of existing traffic information acquisition systems such as high cost and low scalability, wireless sensor networks (WSN)-based traffic information acquisition systems have been studied. WSN-based systems have many benefits including high scalability and low maintenance cost. Recently, various sensors are studied for traffic surveillance based on WSN, such as magnetic, acoustic, and accelerometer sensors. However, ultrasonic sensor based systems have not been studied. There are many issues for WSN-based systems, such as battery driven operation and low computing power. Thus, power saving methods and specific algorithms with low complexity are necessary. In this paper, we introduce optimal methodologies for power saving of ultrasonic sensors based on the modeling and analysis in detail. Moreover, a new vehicle detection algorithm for low complexity using ultrasonic data is presented. The proposed methodologies are implemented in a tiny microprocessor. The evaluation results show that our algorithm has high detection accuracy.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Power Electronics
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.40-47
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• 2003

A low-cost current-sensing scheme for the motor drives with MOSFET is described. Many motor drives usually employ the common current sensors to measure current for the purpose of control or protection. These current sensors, however, significantly burden the power circuit with the size and cost. The proposed current-sensing scheme utilizes information concerning MOSFET's On-voltage and On-resistance. An analogue circuit detecting On-voltage can overcome the above disadvantages because the circuit is small and is made at a low cost, and the fuzzy inference for On-resistance is also simply designed based on MOSFET's characteristics. The validity of this scheme will be experimentally verified by adopting the current control of a battery car.