Abstract

In this paper, we present a novel approach to realizing a battery-free soil pro le probe that uses the temperature difference between the near-surface air and the underground soil as its power source. Temperature changes in the underground soil are slower than that in the near-surface air, and thus a large temperature difference exists between the near-surface air and the underground soil for most of the day. We develop a sensor prototype driven by a thermoelectric generator (TEG) that directly converts this temperature difference into electricity. Simulations are performed using real eld data, and results show that our prototype can harvest an average of several tens to several hundreds of microwatts. Because the typical sensing interval of a soil pro le probe is 1 h, the average power consumption (e.g., for a Texas Instruments CC2650) is about 5 µW, which is much lower than the expected amount of harvested energy. Furthermore, the results of an experimental implementation of the prototype proved that when the temperature difference between the near-surface air and the underground soil is only 3 K, which is much lower than the average temperature difference in an actual eld, the measured output power exceeds 80 µW.

Details

Title
Design and implementation of a soil profile probe powered by air and soil temperature differences
Author
Ikeda, Natsuki 1 ; Shigeta, Ryo 1 ; Shiomi, Junichiro 2 ; Kawahara, Yoshihiro 1 

 Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, Japan 
 Graduate School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, Japan 
Publication year
2019
Publication date
Nov 2019
Publisher
IOP Publishing
ISSN
17426588
e-ISSN
17426596
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
2568305488
Copyright
© 2019. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.