Earticle

This paper presents an integrated multifunctional sensor based on MEMS technology, which can be used or embedded in mobile devices for environmental monitoring. An absolute pressure sensor, a temperature sensor and a humidity sensor are integrated in one silicon chip of which the size is $5mm\times5mm$. The pressure sensor uses a bulk-micromachined diaphragm structure with the piezoresistors. For temperature sensing, a silicon temperature sensor based on the spreading-resistance principle is designed and fabricated. The humidity sensor is a capacitive humidity sensor which has the polyimide film and interdigitated capacitance electrodes. The different piezoresistive orientation is used for the pressure and temperature sensor to avoid the interference between sensors. Each sensor shows good sensor characteristics except for the humidity sensor. However, the linearity and hysteresis of the humidity sensor can be improved by selecting the proper polymer materials and structures.

본 논문에서는 마이크로스트립 패치 안테나와 폴리비닐알코올(PVA; polyvinyl alcohol)을 이용한 습도 센서에 대하여 연구하였다. PVA는 습도에 따라 유전율이 변하는 고분자 물질이며, 전계 변화에 민감한 마이크로스트립 패치 안테나의 방사면에 직사각형 슬롯을 추가하여 비유전율 변화에 대한 감도를 높였다. 0.76 mm 두께의 RF-35 기판에 제작된 안테나의 직사각형 슬롯이 추가된 방사면 주변을 PVA로 얇게 코팅한 후, 온습도 챔버를 사용하여 25도에서 상대습도를 40%에서 80%까지 10% 간격으로 증가시켜 안테나 입력 반사 계수의 공진 주파수와 크기의 변화를 측정하였다. 실험 결과, 상대습도가 40%에서 80%로 증가할 때 안테나 입력 반사 계수의 공진 주파수는 2.447 GHz에서 2.418 GHz로 감소하였고, 입력 반사 계수의 크기는 -7.112 dB에서 -3.428 dB로 증가하였다.

In this paper, a humidity sensor using a microstrip patch antenna(MPA) and polyvinyl alcohol(PVA) is studied. PVA is a polymer material whose permittivity changes with humidity, and a rectangular slot is added to the radiating edge of the MPA, which is sensitive to changes in electric field, in order to increase the sensitivity to changes in relative permittivity. After thinly coating the area around the radiating edge with the rectangular slot of the MPA fabricated on a 0.76 mm-thick RF-35 substrate with PVA, the changes in the resonant frequency and magnitude of the MPA's input reflection coefficient are measured when relative humidity is adjusted from 40% to 80% in 10% increments at a temperature of 25 degrees using a temperature and humidity chamber. Experiment results show that when the relative humidity increases from 40% to 80%, the resonance frequency of the antenna' input reflection coefficient decreases from 2.447 GHz to 2.418 GHz, whereas the magnitude increases from -7.112 dB to -3.428 dB.

IoT 기술 중에서 가장 많이 쓰이는 무선 통신 기술에는 ZigBee, WiFi, Bluetooth, Z-Wave 등 이 있다. 그 중에서 Z-Wave는 현재 세계 시장 점유율이 60%로 선호하는 기술 중 하나이다. 본 논문에서는 Z-Wave 프로토콜을 이용한 온습도 센서 모듈을 구현하였다. 온습도 센서 모듈 의 동작을 위하여 Z-Wave 프로토콜을 분석하고, 컨트롤러 모듈의 펌웨어를 탑재하여 구현하였 고, 센서 모듈은 데이터 시트를 참고하여 설계 및 제작하였다. 또한 센서의 온습도 정보를 모니 터링하는 프로그램을 개발하여 이를 확인하였으며, Z-Wave 모듈의 통달거리 시험, 수신데이터 성공률, 저전력 시험 등을 통하여 성능을 확인하였다.

The most commonly used wireless communication technologies in IoT technology include ZigBee, WiFi, Bluetooth, and Z-Wave. In particular, Z-Wave is currently one of the preferred wireless communication technologies, with a global market share of 60 % of these technologies. In this research, a temperature and humidity sensor module using a Z-wave protocol was designed and manufactured by referring to the data sheet. Subsequently, the Z-Wave protocol was analyzed during the operation of the sensor module, and the firmware of the controller module was mounted and implemented. In addition, a program for monitoring the temperature and humidity information from the sensor module was developed and validated. Finally, the performance of the sensor module was validated through master distance and low power tests on it and its reception data success rate.

Recently, interesting about RFID sensor tag technology which can obtain information on the external environment to smart card is increasing worldwide. In case of sensor tag, most of sensor tag has been developed as resistive type sensor tags. Resistive type humidity sensor requires temperature revision as the influence of temperature and there are special environment to detect low humidity of 15% or less. To solve this problem, circuit was composed that capacitive sensor is interlocked to resistive type sensor tag. The composed circuit is a capacitive humidity sensor which is connected to resistive sensor tags. Using the CVC circuit, capacitive humidity sensor change is output voltage. The output voltage connects with resistive sensor tag. Implemented system's sensor value storage or real time monitoring experiment result was able to determine the usefulness. Also, developed humidity sensor tag is applied to the smart refrigerator.

This paper presents a low cost and flexible IoT enabled smart LED controller using Arduino that is used for emergency exit signs. The Internet of Things (IoT) is become a global network that put together physical objects using network communications for the purpose of inter-communication of devices, access information on internet, interaction with users as well as permanent connected environment. A crucial point in this paper, is underlined on the potential key points of applying the Arduino platform as low cost, easy to use microcontroller with combination of various sensors applied in IoT technology to facilitate and establishment of intelligent products. To demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the system, devices such as LED strip, combination of various sensors, Arduino, power plug and ZigBee module have been integrated to setup smart emergency exit sign system. The general concept of the proposed system design discussed in this paper is all about the combination of various sensor such as smoke detector sensor, humidity, temperature sensor, glass break sensors as well as camera sensor that are connected to the main controller (Arduino) for the purpose of communicating with LED exit signs displayer and dedicated PC monitors from integrated system monitoring (controller room) through gateway devices using Zig bee module. A critical appraisal of the approach in the area concludes the paper.

국내 발전소에서 운전 중인 XLPE 케이블(또는 CV케이블)은 많은 경우 포설된 지 40년에 이르고 있다. 설치 후 운전 상태에 있는 대부분의 CV 케이블은 6∼8년의 기간이 경과하면 열화가 발생하기 시작하고, 근래에 포설한 케 이블이라 할지라도 사고가 발생할 수가 있으며, 사고 발생으로 인하여 막대한 손실을 초래하게 된다. 사고를 미연에 방 지하기 위하여 케이블의 동작상태를 정기적으로 감시 확인하여야 한다. 우리는 케이블의 사고를 체계적으로 감시 및 예방하기 위한 목적으로 측정 시스템을 개발하였다. 이 장비는 수 년 동안 충남 태안에 소재한 한국서부발전주식회사 (Korean Western Power Co. Ltd.)에서 케이블의 동작 상태를 감시하고 있다. 이 논문에서 시스템의 기능 및 동작 원 리를 소개하고, 터빈 발전기 부하용 XLPE 고압케이블의 절연층 절연상태와 습도의 상간관계를 제시한다.

The high-power 6.6 kV XLPE (or CV) cables at Korean electric power stations have been in operation for the last 40 years. Most of the XLPE cables starts deteriorating in 6-8 years from the operating instant of time, some cables may be breakdown at any moment even though they were installed in recent years, causing, huge socioeconomic losses. In order to prevent unexpected cable accident, the operating status of power cables should be monitored in regularly, timely bases. We have invented a device in order to systematically monitor and prevent an abrupt accidents of high-power cables in operation at power station. It has been installed at Korean Western Power Co. Ltd. at Taean, and operating normally for the last 4 years. In this paper, we introduce the functions and operating principles of the measuring device, and present the relationship between humidity and insulation status of XLPE cables for the load of electric turbine generator.

Food poisoning that can happen commonly, a little caution can be prevented in advance, but the average consumer can not know whether the poisoning infection of food. While there are many factors affecting food poisoning typically changes in temperature and humidity, and monitoring temperature and humidity variability during transport and storage is very important. So we proposed the food poisoning prevention monitoring system based on the smart RFID tag system. Proposed system consists of RFID tag, temperature and humidity sensor, sensor interface, RFID reader, and server. In order to verify the effectiveness of the proposed system, we performed experiments on the tofu. Proposed system measures the temperature and humidity using the smart RFID tag. The measured information can be calculated according to food poisoning index with four grade, interest, caution, warning, risk, and is monitored. The proposed system confirms usefulness through experiments.

In this article we have discussed the relative humidity sensor based on fiber grating Fabry-Perot (FBG-FP) coated with polyimide (PI) as a moisture sensitive film in theory. The moisture expansion coefficient of PI film as moisture strain on the FBG-FP sensor, which will result the change of the fiber core effective refractive index, the length of the F-P cavity and the period and effective refractive index of FBG. For that reason, the interference fringes of the reflection spectrum will be changed also. The shift of peak wavelength of the spectrum is traced by the simulation of Matlab. We discuss three situations: the coating on the FBG, FP cavity and the both, and regardless of the temperature changes, the simulation results show that the RH sensitivity can reach to 3.77pm/%RH, 2.12 pm/%RH, 4.05 pm/%RH, respectively.

We studied the possibility that an air capacitor can be used as a humidity sensor by measuring capacitance change. In order to investigate the possibility, the change of capacitance of an air capacitor due to moisture in air was first considered theoretically, and was then experimentally verified. The capacitance was measured by an LCR impedance meter with a 100-kHz and 1-V ac. The results revealed that the changes in the experimentally measured capacitances were greater than those in the theoretically calculated values. Based on this fact, we knew that an air capacitor could be used as part of a humidity sensing device. We expect the humidity sensor with an air capacitor has characteristics of fast response time, high reliability, and high durability compared with other conventional methods.

New polyelectrolytes derived from poly(amide-sulfone)s and 1,5-dibromopentane were simultaneously fabricated on the electrode by the crosslinking reaction. The substrate was pretreated with a bromoalkyl-containing, silane-coupling agent to anchor the humidity-sensitive membrane to the substrate through the covalent bond. When the resistance dependence on the relative humidity of the crosslinked poly(amide-sulfone)s was measured, the resistance varied by three orders of magnitude between 20%RH and 90%RH, which was the required RH range for a humidity sensor operating at ambient humidity. Their water durability, long-term stabilities under various environments, hysteresis and response and recovery times were measured and evaluated as a humidity-sensing membrane.

An electrochemical humidity sensor was fabricated with poly(1,5-diaminonaphthalene) film coated on a gap of two splitted gold electrodes, which were made by vacuum deposition. Response currents according to humidity were measured by the potential sweep method and chronoamperometry. The stability of the polymer film was improved by double step chronoamperometry using the applied voltage of ${\pm}0.5$ Vdc. The response time determined by the pulse technique was about ${\sim}50$ msec and the relative standard deviation of current response was within ${\pm}5.0%$. The response current of the film was intrinsically humidity dependent. The film exhibited a non-linear but reproducible response in ordinary range of relative humidity. The linear equations were $I(nA)=0.28{\times}%RH-1.01$ between 10 to 70 %RH and $I(nA)=6.05{\times}%RH-403.21$ between 70 to 90 %RH.

Two kinds of mutually cross-linkable copolymers were prepared to be used as humidity-sensing materials. The humidity-sensitive thin films consist of cross-linked polyelectrolytes of the following component: 4-vinylbenzyl dimethyl 2-(dimethylphosphino)ethyl phosphonium chloride (1)/ bis(2-methoxyethyl)itaconate (2)= 3/l, 2/l, 1/1 and 1/2 and 4-vinylbenzyl chloride (3)/ vinylbenzyl tributyl phosphonium chloride (4)= 3/l, 2/l, 1/1 and 1/2. The humidity sensor prepared from the reaction of 1/2= 2/l with 3/4= 2/l showed an average resistance of 723,36.2 and 2.42 ㏀ at 30, 60 and 90%RH, respectively. Temperature dependence, frequency dependence, and response time were measured and the reliability test such as water durability and long-term stability were also estimated.

In this study, we developed a fiber-optic humidity sensor (FOHS) system for the monitoring and detection of coolant leakage in nuclear power plants. The FOHS system includes an FOHS, a spectrometer, a halogen white-light source, and a Y-coupler. The FOHS is composed of a humidity-sensing material, a metal tube, a multi-mode plastic optical fiber, and a subminiature version A (SMA) fiber-optic connector. The humidity-sensing material is synthesized from a mixture of polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) in dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) and hydroxyethyl cellulose (HEC) in distilled water. We measured the optical intensity of the light signals reflected from the FOHS placed inside the humidity chamber with relative humidity (RH) variation from 40 to 95%. We found that the optical intensity of the sensing probe increased linearly with the RH. The reversibility and reproducibility of the FOHS were also evaluated.

In this work, the nanocrystalline ZnO/polycrystalline(poly) aluminum nitride(AlN)/ Si-layered structure was fabricated for humidity sensor applications based on surface acoustic wave(SAW). The ZnO film was used as a sensitive material layer. The ZnO and AlN(0002) were deposited by a sol-gel process and a pulse reactive magnetron sputtering, respectively. The ZnO sensitive films coated on AlN have a hexagonal wurtzite structure after the thin films annealed at $400^{\circ}C$, $500^{\circ}C$ and $600^{\circ}C$. The surface of the film exhibits sponginess and a nanometer particle size(below 50 nm). The largest shift in the frequency response was at approximately 200 kHz(the relative humidity: 10 %~90 %) for the structure annealed at $400^{\circ}C$. The effect of the change in the environmental temperature on the frequency response of the SAW humidity sensor was also investigated.

This paper presents the design, fabrication sequence and measurement results of a highly sensitive capacitive-type humidity sensor using a polyimide film without hydrophobic elements. The structure of the humidity sensor is MIM (metalinsulator-metal). For a high sensitivity, a modified aromatic polyimides as a moisture absorbing layer has been synthesized instead of using general polyimides containing hydrophobic elements. The polyimide film was obtained by synthesizing and thermally polymerizing polyamic acid composed of m-pyromellitic dianhydride, phenelenediamine and dimethylacetamide. Characteristics of fabricated sensors which include sensitivity, hysteresis and stability have been measured. The measurement result shows the percent normalized capacitance change of 0.37/%RH over a range from 10 to 90%RH, hysteresis of 0.77% over the same %RH range and maximum drift of 0.25% at 50%RH. The result shows that the developed humidity sensor can be applied to evaluate a hermeticity of various sensors and actuator systems as well as micro packages.

In this paper, passive telemetry capacitive humidity sensor system using a RLSE(Recursive Least Square Estimation) technique Is proposed. To overcome the problem like power limits and complications that general passive telemetry sensor system including IC chip has, the principle of inductive coupling is applied to model the sensor system. Specially, by applying the forgetting factor, we show that the accuracy of its estimation can be improved even in the case of time varying parameter and also the convergence time can be reduced.

Leak-before-break(LBB) approach has been shown to be both cost effective and risk reductive when applied to high energy Piping in nuclear Power Plants. For the Korean Next Generation Reactor (KNGR) development, LBB application is considered for the Main Steam Line(MSL) piping inside containment. Unlike the primary system leakages, the MSL leak detection systems must be based on principles other than radioactivity measurements. Among humidity, heat and acoustic noise currently being considered as indicators of leakage, we explored humidity as an effective one and developed ceramic-based humidity sensor which can be qualified for LBB applications. The ceramic material, sintered and annealed MgCr$_2$O$_4$-TiO$_2$, is shown to increase its electrical conductivity drastically upon water vapor adsorption over the entire temperature range of interest. With this ceramic sensor specimen, we suggested installation-inside-the-piping method by which we can detect leakage more rapidly and sensitively. In this paper, we describe the progress in the development and characterization of ceramic humidity sensor for the LBB application to the MSL of KNGR.

UV-curable electrolytes inks were prepared by dissolving [2-[(methacryloyloxy)ethyl]dimethyl]propylaminium bromide (MEPAB), 1,5-[bis(2-methacryloxyethyl)dimethyl ammono]penthane dibromide (MDAPD), hexafunctional reactive oligomer (SP1013), trimethylolpropane triacrylate (TMPTA) and a photoinitiator in methanol/2-methoxyethanol. The compositions of the electrolyte inks were MEPAB/MDAPD/SP1013/TMPTA=6/24/17.2/12.8, 15/15/17.2/12.8 and 24/6/17.2/12.8. Humid-membranes were deposited on a gold electrode/alumina electrode using an ink-jet printer equipped with a UV lamp followed by immediate UV curing. The humidity-sensing characteristics including hysteresis, frequency and temperature dependence, response time and water durability were estimated.

In this study we fabricated thin organic polymer films on the comb-electrode by plasma polymerization methode in electrode gas flow type reactor. The dielectric constant of polymer films were increased by increasing relative humidity and we used free volume theory in order to explain the mechanism of water absorption phenomena of polymer films.