Temperature Measurements on Hot Spots of Power Substations Utilizing Surface Acoustic Wave Sensors

In several applications in the field of metrology, the direct connection of the sensor element with the respective signal-processing unit of the measurement system is not trivial. It can be mentioned, as an example, the measurement of hot points in electric power substations because of the high electrical potential. To solve that problem, two alternatives were studied, one using active surface acoustic wave (SAW) sensors and other using passive SAW tags. For the passive sensor, a SAW radio-frequency identification (RFID) temperature detector was used. That technology is widely applied for typical transport identification (grain transportation, road traffic control), but its application in the field of metrology is innovative. The variation in temperature makes an alteration in the characteristics of the piezoelectric material of the SAW matrix, changing mostly the resonance frequency. Using SAW–RFID, the problem of measuring temperature basically is directed to the identification of the frequency of resonance of the SAW. The use of active SAW sensors has been demonstrated to be much more satisfactory for the solution of such a problem because of the limitation in the range of the passive sensors.