Energy-autonomous wireless vibration sensor for condition-based maintenance of machinery

This paper addresses the development of an energy-autonomous wireless vibration sensor for condition-based monitoring of machinery. Such technology plays an increasingly important role in modern manufacturing industry. In this work, energy harvesting is realized by resorting to a custom designed thermoelectric generator. The developed wireless vibration sensor has a remotely tunable sampling rate, which caters to the different needs of various operating conditions. The two key features, energy autonomy and wireless measurement, are demonstrated successfully by the experimental results obtained on the thermoelectric generator and the wireless sensor.