Energy harvesting for IoT road monitoring systems

Internet of Things (IoT) solutions guarantee the high performance requested by users and authorities in terms of efficiency, sustainability, connectivity, and durability for modern transportation infrastructures, allowing, at the same time, small size, low power consumption, wireless transmission and easily deployable solutions. IoT monitoring systems powered through Energy Harvesting Technologies (EHTs) are often indicated as the most efficient solutions to address these requests because of several advantages (e.g., remote management simplification, independence from electricity grid). In this paper, the most used EHTs in the field of road infrastructures were analyzed and, among them, a photovoltaic standalone system (PVSS) was selected and considered as the power supply unit of an electronic structural health monitoring (SHM) system. In particular, a network of sensor units (SUs), wirelessly connected to one central unit (CU), acting as an innovative road pavement monitoring system solution was taken in account as benchmark. Consequently, the objective of this study is to draw guidelines for the designer that can establish the proper sizing of the PVSS, based on the energy consumption of the SHM system, according to multiple factors, such as typology and number of sensors, frequency of measurements, duty cycle, and days of autonomy.