Systems and methods for wireless activation and communications in concrete sensors
A system includes a sensor device for monitoring properties of a building material within which the sensor device can be embedded. The sensor device includes a controller, a memory associated with the controller, one or more sensors communicatively connected to the controller for measuring one or more properties of the building material, and a power supply for powering components of the sensor device. The power supply includes a battery and a power regulator. The sensor device includes communications circuitry connected to the controller, where the controller is configured to receive data on the one or more properties of the building material from the one or more sensors after the sensor device is embedded into the building material. The communications circuitry wirelessly transmits the data on the one or more properties to a cloud-based computing system via a cellular transmission.
1 . A system, comprising:
a sensor device configured to be embedded in a building material,
the sensor device comprising:
communications circuitry including a near-field communications interface configured to receive an activation signal from a computing device external to the building material:
a power management subcircuit having an input electrically coupled to the communications circuitry to receive the activation signal and an output electrically coupled to a power regulator, the power management subcircuit being configured to enable the power regulator in response to the activation signal;
the power regulator having an input electrically coupled to the output of the power management subcircuit and an output configured to provide regulated electrical power;
a microcontroller unit having a power input electrically coupled to the output of the power regulator;
one or more sensing components electrically coupled to the microcontroller unit and configured to measure one or more properties of the building material;
nonvolatile memory electrically coupled to the microcontroller unit and configured to store data representing the measured one or more properties; and
wherein the microcontroller unit is configured to receive measurement data from the sensing components, store the measurement data in the nonvolatile memory, and control the communications circuitry to wirelessly transmit the stored measurement data to at least one of the computing device and a cloud-based computing system.
2 . The system of claim 1 , wherein the building material comprises concrete, asphalt, or epoxy.
3 . The system of claim 1 , wherein the one or more properties comprise building material strength, relative humidity, temperature, vibration, pH, gas and particle presence, load, and/or acoustic properties.
4 . The system of claim 1 , wherein the sensor device communicates with the cloud-based computing system using high speed packet access [HSPA], HSPA+, long term evolution [LTE], WiMax, near field communications (NFC), Bluetooth, personal area networks (PANs), NB-IOT, DR-Plus, or CAT-M1.