Fully self-powered instantaneous wireless traffic monitoring system based on triboelectric nanogenerator and magnetic resonance coupling

Abstract

Abstract The self-powered wireless sensor systems are highly sought for the information era, as they are able to link everything together, yet without the need for electric power supply. They have been exploited for applications in various fields, particularly for environment-related ones. Here, we propose a fully self-powered triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG)-based wireless traffic monitoring system for real-time monitoring of illegally entered electric motorbikes on the footpaths, and flow rates of pedestrians and motorbikes, and speed and driving direction of electric motorbikes on non-motorized lanes. The TENG was used to directly convert the energy from pedestrian’s stepping and electric motorbike’s rolling into an oscillating signal with encoded sensing information, and transmit it to the receiver wirelessly via magnetic resonance coupling. Results showed that the multi-variable traffic monitoring system can identify pedestrians and motorbikes, check the illegally entered motorbikes on the footpath, and measure speed of the motorbikes with an accuracy of over 94%, monitor driving direction of electric motorbikes on non-motorized lanes. The self-powered wireless traffic monitoring system is simple in structure, low cost, easy to install, and spontaneous response to the traffic condition, and does not contain electronic devices, microcontrollers and transmission chips but the passive components, hence it has great application potential as a green intelligent traffic monitoring system.