Battery-free Mechanically-Tunable Wireless Sensors for Railroad Track Ballast Monitoring
- Resource Type
- Conference
- Authors
- Uluer, Ismail H.; Frolik, Jeff; Weller, Thomas M.
- Source
- 2022 IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation and USNC-URSI Radio Science Meeting (AP-S/URSI) Antennas and Propagation and USNC-URSI Radio Science Meeting (AP-S/URSI), 2022 IEEE International Symposium on. :117-118 Jul, 2022
- Subject
- Fields, Waves and Electromagnetics
Wireless communication
Wireless sensor networks
Electronic ballasts
Transmitting antennas
Loading
Receiving antennas
Manufacturing
- Language
- ISSN
- 1947-1491
This paper introduces a battery-free, mechanically tunable and narrowband wireless sensor that can be used to detect railroad track ballast fault conditions, along with an interrogator. The sensor consists of receive (operating at f 0 ) and transmit (operating at 2f 0 ) antennas and a diode for frequency doubling. The experimental and simulated results reveal that the sensor operates with high conversion efficiency at micro-Watt power levels. This performance indicates that the sensor can work effectively if it is buried under the railroad track for fault detection. Frequency tunability is achieved by adjusting dielectric loading on input and output matching networks.