An electronic interface for measuring CO2 emissions in embedded systems

The ever-increasing application of wireless sensor networks in many different fields is causing a growing demand of low-cost energy-efficient sensors for monitoring physical variables such as temperature, pressure or gas concentration. This paper presents a conditioning system for low-cost non-dispersive infrared gas sensors used to measure the CO2 concentration in an open air environment. It mainly consists of an amplification and filtering circuit that adapts the small and noisy signal provided by the sensor to a signal which can be easily read by a low-power microcontroller. The proposed interface presents a good trade-off between energy consumption and accuracy, compatible with the energy requirements of wireless sensor network applications. Test performed connecting the system interface to a node sensor in a wireless sensor network using a simple communications protocol only causes a low reduction in the operating life of the node.