Wirelessly Powered Temperature Sensing System Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicle for Environmental Monitoring

This paper presents an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-assisted wirelessly powered temperature sensing system. The system includes a custom wireless temperature readout IC with envelop-injection-locking clock generation and a size-wise power transmitter for extending the operation time of the UAV. A wirelessly powered temperature readout silicon chip is designed to measure the temperature of NiO sensor. The chip was fabricated using 0.18-mu m CMOS technology. The measured rectifier sensitivity is -17 dBm. A read range of 2.7 m is demonstrated for powering a 2.2 mu W temperature-sensing chip with an effective isotropic radiation power of 22 dBm at 929 MHz. The low-power-temperature sensing IC, lightweight power transmitter, and microstrip antenna enable batteryless environmental sensing using a UAV.