Sistemi wireless a bassa potenza per applicazioni di monitoraggio

Sensor networks play a crucial role in the digital evolution across different fields of research and industrial applications, enabling possibilities that rely on the remote monitoring of phenomena. Among these, we find predictive maintenance, process automation, asset tracking, and environmental observation. Wireless enabled sensor networks are among the scientific fields that have recently experienced a huge growth and impact, thanks also to new low power technologies and the spreading of low cost transceiver electronic systems. However, deploying WSNs in rough settings presents challenges, especially related to power consumption and long-term sustainability, taking into consideration the overall complexity and cost. This thesis discusses the applied research activity on energy-efficient solutions through adaptive power management, low-power communication, and energy harvesting to enhance the system sustainability and implementation. The research work presented ranges in different fields of application WSNs, among which the safety and structural monitoring for construction sites, environmental monitoring of underground areas subjected to human interaction, and building-efficiency oriented systems. In this work the development of the aforementioned systems is discussed in architectural design, prototyping, implementation, and real scenario results, providing detail at all levels, with the aim of contributing to the spreading of low-power oriented autonomous monitoring systems.