Clamp-and-Forget: A self-sustainable non-invasive wireless sensor node for smart metering applications

Measuring and managing the power consumption of household appliances, as well as that of industrial machineries, is becoming more and more important to improve the distribution and usage of the electrical energy and to reduce the energy bill. We present the design of a non-invasive wireless current meter which can measure AC current up to 60ARMS60ARMS exploiting a small clamp-on inductive sensor. The novelty of the design is a subsystem consisting of a harvesting circuit designed to extract energy from the same current transducer used for measurements. Experiments have been conducted to validate the approach, to assess the accuracy of the sensing system and deviations due to the energy harvester, and to determine the condition which permits us to achieve the energy neutrality and thus, a self-sustainable smart meter.