AMBIENT RF ENERGY GEOMAPPING SYSTEM

• US 20170280282A1
• Filed: 03/21/2017
• Published: 09/28/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 03/22/2016
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Vikram Ilangkadhir Pandian
• Original Assignee: Vikram Ilangkadhir Pandian
• Inventors: Pandian, Vikram Ilangkadhir
• Granted Patent: US 9,900,740 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/52 specially adapted for the location of the user terminal
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/02 Services making use of location information
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/80 Services using short range communication, e.g. near-field communication [NFC], radio-frequency identification [RFID] or low energy communication
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 52/0296 switching to a backup power supply
• CPC Class Codes: Y02D 30/70 in wireless communication networks

Abstract

Recent research efforts in ambient RF energy harvesting are being focused on designing ultra-low power battery free products and maximizing the efficiency of RF harvesting circuits. But the vital information that researchers lack in is how much RF energy is present at a given geographical location and whether their product will be getting enough power to operate at that specific area of usage. The objective is to find the amount of ambient RF energy available in a given location to power battery free products. This was achieved by designing and building a novel, handheld, low cost, system to capture the ambient RF signal (such as cellular signals, TV broadcasting waves, and WiFi signals), convert to DC power level that can be harvested at any given location, and visually GeoMap it using the GPS coordinates. The constructed hardware portion of the system consists of the Arduino microcontroller, the RF Power Detector chip, wideband antenna, and Bluetooth Module. The Arduino is programmed to capture the RF Power data from the RF Power Detector chip and send it to the Mobile Application. The developed Android App is able to communicate with the Arduino via Bluetooth and receive the captured RF Power data from it. The data is uploaded to the webserver along with GPS coordinates. The created website stores the uploaded data from the app to the online database. This data is then GeoMapped, which visually represents the geographical areas having the various RF Power levels with different graded colors shown as a heat map. In conclusion, a system to capture, convert, and GeoMap Ambient RF energy has been successfully designed and calibrated for statistical uses. This system can be extended to GeoMap any transduceable physical phenomena using appropriate transducers.

Claims

1. An Ambient RF Energy GeoMapping System, comprising of:

A system capable of (a) capturing and converting the ambient RF power to encoded digital bits and (b) transmitting that information to a mobile computing device.

An application software running on the said mobile computing device that can process, display, store and upload that said RF power and GPS information to a webserver.

A website that can create an interactive graded geographic map representing that said RF power at any given location.

2. The Ambient RF Energy GeoMapping System of claim 1, wherein a handheld system uses an antenna to convert ambient RF energy into an electrical signal.

3. The Ambient RF Energy GeoMapping System of claim 1, wherein the mobile computing device is a cellular phone.

4. The Ambient RF Energy GeoMapping System of claim 1, wherein the transmission of information from the handheld system to the mobile computing device happens using wireless communication such as Bluetooth.

5. The Ambient RF Energy GeoMapping System of claim 1, wherein the mobile computing device calculates and displays the RF power level on its display and logs the RF power level, GPS coordinates, and ambient temperature to the said mobile device database.

6. The Ambient RF Energy GeoMapping System of claim 1, wherein the said website has a login to accept data only from validated users.

7. The Ambient RF Energy GeoMapping System of claim 1, wherein the mobile computing device uploads the RF power, GPS coordinates and ambient temperature information to the webserver through the internet such as Wifi or cellular data communication after the webserver validates the user.

8. The Ambient RF Energy GeoMapping System of claim 1, wherein the server side script of the webserver stores and processes the received data from the said mobile device to be accessed by user via web browser.

9. The Ambient RF Energy GeoMapping System of claim 1, wherein the client side script of the web browser access the said data, process and create an interactive geographic map representing the said RF power as color coded heat map.

10. A GeoMapping System for any ambient transduceable physical phenomena, comprising of:

A system capable of (a) capturing and converting any ambient transduceable physical phenomena via suitable transducer to encoded digital bits and (b) transmitting that information to a mobile computing device.

An application software running on the said mobile computing device that can process, display, store and upload that said ambient transduceable physical phenomena and GPS information to a webserver.

A website that can create an interactive graded geographic map representing that said ambient transduceable physical phenomena at any given location.

11. The GeoMapping System for any ambient transduceable physical phenomena of claim 10, wherein the captured and geomapped transduceable physical phenomena could be ultraviolet radiation.