An Optical Wireless Temperature Sensor

This paper presents a wireless temperature sensor that uses a GaAs solar cell as a wireless transmitter of information. Transmission of information with a solar cell is possible by modulating the luminescent radiation emitted by the solar cell. This technique, dubbed Optical Frequency Identification or OFID, was recently reported in the literature and in this work is used to transmit temperature measurements wirelessly. The hardware design of an OFID temperature sensor tag and its corresponding reader is described. A prototype of the proposed sensor was built as a proof of concept. Experimental results demonstrate wireless data transmission at a distance of 1 m distance and at a bit rate of 1200 bps. The wireless temperature sensor has a maximum error of 0.39°C (after calibration) with respect to a high-precision temperature meter.