Benchmarking a Sensor-less Kinetic Transducer for Inertial Measurement Unit for Industrial IoT Applications

The measurements of inertial forces are important for a wide range of devices and sensor systems, including vehicles, robots, and industrial equipment. Reliability and measurement performance are thereby one of the most critical aspects to consider, particularly as Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs) are often subjected to vibrations of the real-world environment. In this paper, we carry out an experimental validation of a novel wireless transducer-based IMU for the Internet of Things application to address this issue. It is a sensor-less vibration measurement system based on energy harvesting, which is implemented to measure vibrations at low frequencies (16 - 22 Hz) and at very weak vibration levels (0.1 - 0.3 g). In this study, a preliminary assessment of the vibration energy harvester is made, considering operational characteristics and its applicability for industrial applications. The developed intelligent measurement system is composed of three modules: (i) the inertial transducer module, (ii) the energy management module to convert the harvested energy to the power supply, and (iii) the wireless sensor node module responsible for data collection and transmission. A supercapacitor is used to store and maintain the required energy for powering the wireless node so that the systems can work in autonomous or quasi-autonomous modes. Obtained results show that the proposed system is capable of measuring acceleration in a vibration environment, providing a smart solution in the context of low-power and autonomous measurement systems, intelligent wireless sensor networks, and industry 4.0.