Challenges of WiFi-Enabled and Solar-Powered Sensors for Smart Ports

Increasing shipment volumes in the space-limited Hamburg port area demand a more efficient way of port organization. To achieve this goal, a key aspect of Hamburg's smart port initiative is to deploy wireless sensors and actuators to realize a cyber-physical port. However, the required large number of sensor and actuator devices raises two essential challenges. Firstly, external power provision infrastructure would be non-economic, inflexible, and therefore infeasible. Secondly, connecting common cyber-physical system devices to the Internet requires additional infrastructure and thus complexity due to the need for gateways. Our research tackles these challenges by investigating the applicability of novel, low-power IEEE802.11 WiFi-based devices to enable communication with existing or planned WiFi access points while being reliably and autarkicly powered by solar power. As a first step, we analyzed the power consumption of a low-power IEEE802.11 WiFi platform. Our measurements show promising results that allow us to propose methods for energy conservation and dimensioning of a miniature solar power supply.