Development of an Intelligent Fuel Monitoring and Theft Detection System Equipped with GPS & GSM Integration, State of Charge Monitoring and Realtime Alarm Generation

Nowadays, fuel theft is considered to be a serious problem and it creates a significant financial impact. Most of the fuel theft is from vehicles, commercial transportation containers, and industrial fuel storage containers. To prevent fuel theft and any abnormalities in the battery of a hybrid electric vehicle, an innovative hybrid model is developed where the fuel level is constantly monitored using a resistance-based fuel level sensor. The rapid change in the fuel level can be sensed by the rapid change in the resistance values. The State of Charge in the battery of the HEV/electric vehicles is monitored using a voltage sensor, any abnormalities in the SoC of the battery in the electric vehicles can be sensed with the help of voltage values from the voltage sensor. The Global Positioning System that is integrated with the Microcontroller collects the GPS coordinates of the location where the rapid change in the fuel level or the abnormalities in the SoC (State of Charge) is detected. The Microcontroller processes the collected data from the fuel level sensor and the GPS and sends an alert using the GSM Module which is being utilized for cellular communication. An onboard buzzer and the integrated display alert the personnel to the rapid change in the fuel level. The fuel level in the fuel containers or the SoC of the hybrid electric vehicles is constantly monitored and is displayed on the integrated LCD. The method of fuel theft/abnormality detection and alarm system helps in efficiently preventing fuel theft. This proposed method is deemed to be accurate, and cost-effective and contributes significantly to reducing both environmental impact and financial losses from fuel theft.