TinyBird: An Energy Neutral Acoustic Bluetooth-Low-Energy Sensor Node with RF Energy Harvesting

Abstract

Continuous advances in sensing and wireless technology now permit acoustic data acquisition and wireless transmission. With these technological developments, new application scenarios are a focal important for research theses. In particular in-vivo animal monitoring is a quickly growing domain, in which the wireless sensor needs to be placed on the animal's body and should be unobtrusive, light-weight, small, and long-lasting, or perpetually working. This paper presents the design and development of TinyBird, an ultra-low-power, miniaturized and lightweight wireless sensor node for acoustic monitoring. The node is designed to be worn with minimal effort by small-sized birds, to collect, process, and send/receive data to/from a remote host via Bluetooth Low-Energy. The main feature of the developed node is the capability to stream compressed or uncompressed audio data continuously. One unique feature of TinyBirds is the capability to harvest energy from a RF Power transmitter with a 12mm x 2.4mm antenna. Moreover, TinyBird achieves self-sustainability when placed 40cm from the RF source and streaming data at 16kHz. Finally the low power consumption of only 157μW, when in idle mode that allows the node to achieve self-sustainability with longer distances.