Analysis of Low-Power Operation for an Environmental Monitoring Beacon

This paper presents the development of an environmental monitoring Bluetooth Low Energy beacon and analyzes its power consumption based on different operation modes. The technology used for data transmission and sensor data acquisition settings can have a significant impact on a beacon's battery lifetime. As our work suggests, it is possible to greatly increase the life of such a device by simply reducing the sampling/transmission actions rates or by changing the way in which the Bluetooth Low Energy advertisement payloads are sent. The operating period of the system, running on a 3 V coin cell battery with a capacity of 230 mAh, can go up to roughly 2.4 years. Future developments of the described system can be achieved by replacing the battery with power harvesting elements or by complementing the sensing unit, which currently provides ambient parameters of temperature, relative humidity, and atmospheric pressure, with Nitrogen Dioxide, Carbon Dioxide, or Volatile organic compound gas sensors. Thus, this beacon-based solution becomes easily scalable and implementable in a wide range of monitoring applications, either outdoor or indoor.