Energy Management Switch for a Self-Powered Wireless Sensor in Monitoring Power Systems

An efficient switching scheme for magnetically self-powered wireless sensor is proposed. Under a stochastic nature of currents in the power lines, the proposed switch can store excessive harvested energy into a supercapacitor and supply energy for sensing operation when a conductor current becomes extremely low. The smart switching was realized by integrating autonomous switching circuits with digital logic circuits. The self-powered wireless sensors enabled real-time monitoring of power lines for an extended range of the conductor current and sustained sensing operation even during power outages. Moreover, to investigate feasibility of the self-powered sensor running on a commercial LoRa network, harvested power requirement for the network was assessed.