Study of Methane NDIR Sensors Requirements for a Self-Powered IoT Node

The growing interest in environmental monitoring, and specifically greenhouse gases, gives rise to new research focused on the design of gas concentration sensors more sustainable, autonomous and aligned with new paradigms such as Internet of Things (IoT), Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) and Artificial Intelligence (AI). In this article, the main principles of gas concentration measurement are compared and it is concluded that non-dispersive infrared (NDIR) sensors may be the most appropriate solution to be integrated into a low-power WSN node. As a result, the design of a sensor is proposed, optimizing the measurement time and consumption, so that they can be self-powered using energy harvesting and supercapacitors (SCs) instead of batteries. Finally, the energy balance is carried out for an application example.