Low Power Remote Sensing System for Ceramic Thermocouples

The ceramic thermocouple sensor is a promising alternative to traditional thermocouple due to their corrosion resistance and cost-effective manufacturing. Currently, no electronic Interface or Integrated Circuit solution is commercially available which can be used to interface these thermocouples at low-cost and low power for accurate temperature measurement. An electronic system is needed to use these ceramic sensors which consumes less amount of power for an extensive period of time with remote monitoring option. This thesis proposes a low-power electronic remote sensing system that works for ceramic thermocouples. The system consists of three parts. They are battery-operated sensor node electronic circuit, low-power wireless system and a real-time visualization tool at operators end. The key features of the sensor node electronic circuit are low-power operation with long batterylifetime, accurate high temperature measurements (500℃-1800℃), and reconfigurable settings. Also, a sleep mode for sensor node is created to save power consumption when no monitoring is required. Operational Amplifiers with proper gain setting and filtering elements have been used to design the sensor node which performs the amplification, noise removal and minimizing loading effect. Following that, a low-power microcontroller is configured to perform linearization, error correction, and temperature measurement from sensor data. The wireless system is designed using LoRa technology for long range coverage at low power and it does not require any internet or cellular connection to establish the network. The visualization tool at the operator’s end provides the sensor behavior and change in pattern so that operators can make prompt decisions. So, this low-power electronic system along with long range wireless network for interfacing the ceramics thermocouple will bring great advantage for the industries who need resilient and easy-to-install electronic temperature monitoring solutions at their existing vulnerable sites to ensure safe operation. By implementing mass deployment of these sensors along with the remote sensing system, industries will be able to capture the spatial temperature variation of any hot environment and identify any probable future risk which can be prevented by taking advanced actions.