Forest Fire Detection Using Optimized Solar – Powered Zigbee Wireless Sensor Networks

Forest Fires are one of the most important and prevalent type of disasters and they can create a great deal of Environmental Impacts due to which their early detection is very vital. The main need for choosing this particular application for the detection of forest fires is to overcome the demerits present in the existing technologies of MODIS and Basic Wireless Sensor Network-based Forest Fire Detection Systems and an advanced system is developed for the detection of forest fires. The two main modules present in the project are the Monitoring Area Module and the Forest Area Module. All these together are split into five sub-modules for step-by-step development and implementation. Those include Sensors’ Module, Serial Communication Module using Zigbee, Optimized Solar Energy Harvester using Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT), PC-based Web Server and Mechanical Modeling. The first three sub-modules belong to the Forest Area Module. They are integrated together and mechanical modeling is done to place it in the forest, whereas, the PC-based Web Server is developed for the Monitoring Area. The outcome of the above implementations reveal that various sensors used in addition to the temperature sensor improves security level for areas located near the forests. It also shows that the Optimized Solar Energy Harvester increases the efficiency to about 85 % and the use of PC-based Web Server reduces the bulkiness and cost of the entire system.