Ultra-Low Power Event-Driven Wireless Sensor Node Using Piezoelectric Accelerometer for Health Monitoring

We describe a low power consumption wireless sensor node designed for monitoring the conditions of animals, especially of chickens. The node detects variations in 24-h behavior patterns by acquiring the number of the movement of an animal whose acceleration exceeds a threshold measured in per unit time. Wireless sensor nodes when operated intermittently are likely to miss necessary data during their sleep mode state and waste the power in the case of acquiring useless data. We design the node worked only when required acceleration is detected using a piezoelectric accelerometer and a comparator for wake-up source of micro controller unit. (C) 2009 The Japan Society of Applied Physics DOI: 10.1143/JJAP.48.070222