Dr. Nader Shehata
Funded By: - Kuwait Foundation for Advancement of Science (KFAS)
Funding Amount: - KD 49900
Year: - 2017
Summary: - This project introduces an autonomously managed sensor network for water quality monitoring with two major contributions; design of optical nanosensor and developing printed nano-antennas for sensor nodes. Firstly, it is aimed to design optical nano-sensors to detect a set of parameters which indicate the water quality, such as dissolved oxygen concentration, PH, and tiny pollutants. These optical sensors use cerium oxide (ceria) nanoparticles as active sensing material due to the higher surface-to-volume ratio with corresponding higher sensitivity. The optical sensing mechanism is better than the electrochemical one with no need of reference electrodes. On the other hand, the used sensor nodes for communication will be embedded with printed flexible antennas using conductive nanoparticles ink. That can reduce the cost of antennas which depend on cleanroom processes of lithography and etching. Also, the usage of conductive nanoparticles ink is more efficient compared to the bulky ink for lower surface losses and consequently larger radiation area. In our proposed system, the targeted network is controlled by an automated large-scale management platform that handles data collection, analysis, visualization and decision support with minimum human intervention. Hence, our automated flexible sensor network can be used through water quality monitoring over large scale distance.
