Wireless powering of sensors in free space and concrete medium

• Published in: 2009 13th International Symposium on Antenna Technology and Applied Electromagnetics and the Canadian Radio Science Meeting pp. 1 - 4
• Main Authors: Punjala, S.S., Makki, K.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01.02.2009
• Subjects: Antenna; Building materials; Concrete; Conductivity; Dipole antennas; Electric field; Equations; Frequency; Permittivity; Permittivity (ε); Power; Radiation resistance (R r ); Space technology; Surface resistance; Wireless sensor networks
• ISBN: 9781424429790; 142442979X
• DOI: 10.1109/ANTEMURSI.2009.4805101

The whole idea of this paper is to power sensors buried inside concrete at a certain depth by using a reconfigurable PIFA antenna and to power sensors in free space. The PIFA antenna inside concrete has to absorb power from the incident plane wave on the surface of concrete. Electric field which is incident on concrete would decay according to the parameters of concrete. The purpose of this paper is to show that an antenna with a fractal surface is an ideal choice to power a sensor inside concrete since the surface area is much larger. Any device in free space can by powered from the RF energy that its antenna receives from another antenna. Since the antenna is large we can make sure that more than one sensor could be powered by a single antenna at a single time inside concrete. Antennas in free space are powered based on the electric field on its surface. Reconfigurable antennas can be used for powering sensors for transmission from inside the surface of concrete which would provide a lot of advantages. Concrete was modeled in HFSS according to the parameters in previous research papers.