Aerosense: A Self-Sustainable and Long-Range Bluetooth Wireless Sensor Node for Aerodynamic and Aeroacoustic Monitoring on Wind Turbines

Abstract

This article presents a low-power, self-sustainable, and modular wireless sensor node for aerod- ynamic and acoustic measurements on wind turbines and other industrial structures. It includes 40 high-accuracy barometers, ten microphones, and five differential pressure sensors and implements a lossy and a lossless on-board data compression algorithm to decrease the transmission energy cost. The wireless transmitter is based on Bluetooth Low Energy 5.1 (BLE) tuned for long range and high throu- ghput while maintaining adequate per-bit energy efficiency (80 nJ). Moreover, we field-assessed the node capability to collect precise and accurate aerodynamic data. Outdoor experimental tests revealed that the system can acquire and sustain a data rate of 850 kb\ <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\ \text{s}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> over 438 m. The power consumption while collecting and streaming all the measured data is 120 mW, enabling self-sustainability and long-term in situ monitoring with a 111 cm 2 photovoltaic panel.