Sustainable and Environment Friendly Power Sources for Long Duration Environment Monitoring

Field sensor networks are playing a pivotal role in long-duration environment monitoring particularly of forests, rivers, urban air, water and soil health. Field sensor networks have been made possible thanks to rapid advances and miniaturization of electronics, radios, sensors and actuators. However, the power supplies required for these devices remain a challenge. In this work, a review of power supplies for these sensor networks is performed and PEM fuel cells are identified as an ideal backup-power supply for their high-efficiency, high specific-energy and minimal environment footprint compared to current and state-of-the-art primary and rechargeable batteries.