Self Powered Wireless Sensors for Chassis, Powertrain, Working Equipment and Trailed Implements

Due to known vibration frequency ranges of engines, gearboxes and transmissions, and due to vibration frequencies of chassis of off-road and, more in general heavy duty vehicles, it is possible to design series of sensors, capable to self-sustain their needs from the energy point of view. This technology enables new possibilities in terms of sensorization of drivelines, chassis, trailed vehicles and mountable working equipment, both for heavy duty machines and for agricultural machines and equipments. This sensorisation technique will simplify the connection between the machine and the trailer or the equipments, but primarily will allow sensorization of elements that are traditionally non sensorized like shafts and all other parts difficult to be connected through wires. Last but not least, this technique allows the retrofit of existing vehicles increasing the control paradigms, the diagnosis (both local and remote) and the performance of these existing vehicles. The paper will show a survey of possible sensor configurations and sensor design, in order to clarify the quantitative aspects of sensors functionalities in terms of energy requirements for analog sensors acquisition, signal transduction, data transmission thorough a wireless link; all data transmitted by sensors will be acquired by a data collector, installed in the machine. This electronic control unit is a gateway, capable to share the information acquired in the traditional control machine system over CAN bus. The paper will show that the energy harvesting characteristics of piezo-electric or piezo-ceramic elements could be useful to realize autonomous small electronic systems, capable to collect signals from sensors and to send data wirelessly to a machine gateway, to realize a more controllable and safer vehicle class.