Energy Harvesting for Wildfire
The Problem
Every year millions of hectares of forest are destroyed due to wildfires. More carbon monoxide is produced on account of such natural disasters. Early detection of a forest fire can significantly reduce potential loss of vegetation and shorten the reaction time hence the cost of fire fighting can also be minimized. The Existing Forest Fire Detection largely consists of observers in the form of watchers in monitoring towers, satellite monitoring, and optical camera sensors. These Systems are cost-intensive and requires a lot of resources. Watchers in monitoring towers do not interfere with fire as long as it does not pose a danger to humans or properties. Satellite monitoring is greatly affected by the atmospheric conditions and fires under the clouds are often missed and optical cameras have a high false alarm rate. Forest fires in India have increased by 125 % in the last 2 years. India loses around Rs 1,176 crores a year to forest fires. The existing detection system is limited by terrain, time of day and weather conditions. Hence the need is imminent for developing a system that can monitor forest fires efficiently and with minimum time delay.
Our Proposal
The proposed solution recommends stand-alone boxes that are to be deployed throughout a forest. Each box contains HUMIDITY, TEMPERATURE, CO sensors coupled with microcontroller and an XBee module for data communication. These units communicate wirelessly and send the data collected from all the sensors to a base station/Gateway that contains a central computer and an Internet connection. The fire detection is done based on ARMSTRONG FIRE INDEX along with the values of gas sensors. In case of fire forest breaks out, a message to the concerned authority is sent first and then the data collected will be uploaded in a database from the base station computer to an online website. As such, the Forest Fire Unit would have access to statistics and can monitor a live feed from each forest. These sensors can be an inactive mode to sleep mode to save energy. They measure their corresponding parameters every 15 minutes and transmit them in a string to the base station unit. One of major challenges in operating remote sensor nodes is the availability of reliable and long term power sources. The answer to this challenge is on-site energy harvesting technology such as Plant Microbial Fuel cell to power up our sensor nodes.MFCs are bio-electrical devices that harness the natural metabolism of microbes to produce electrical power directly. Our system outperforms the existing systems in terms of Detection Delay, System Cost (Microbial Fuel Cell) and system lifetime.
We Assume that...
The soil-moisture is optimum for a forest.
Wild animals don't tamper the installed system
Constraints to Overcome
One of major challenge in operating remote sensor nodes is the availability of reliable and long term power sources. The answer to this challenge is on-site energy harvesting technology such as Plant Microbial Fuel cell. MFCs are bio-electrical devices that harness the natural metabolism of microbes to produce electrical power directly . Within the MFC microbes acts as a catalyst to break down sugars and other nutrients in the surrounding environment and release a portion of energy contained within those molecules as electrical current . However electrical power from an MFC is a low-current ,high-impedance power source preventing the use of standard off-the-shelf electronic systems. Hence we developed a power management circuit that was able to boost the incoming electrical potential to a usable voltage