Methane Gas Density Monitoring and Predicting Based on RFID Sensor Tag and CNN Algorithm

According to the advantages of integrating wireless sensors networks (WSN) and radio frequency identification (RFID), this paper proposes a novel method for methane gas density monitoring and predicting based on a passive RFID sensor tag and a convolutional neural networks (CNN) algorithm. The proposed wireless sensor is based on electronic product code (EPC) generation2 (G2) protocol and the sensor data is embedded into the identification (ID) information of the RFID chip. The wireless sensor consists of a communication section, radio-frequency (RF) front-end section, and digital section. The communication section is used to perform the transmission and reception of wireless signals, modulation, and demodulation. The RF front-end section is adopted to provide the stable supply voltage for other parts. The digital section is employed to achieve sensor data and control the overall operation of the wireless sensor based on EPC protocol. Because the miscellaneous noises will decrease the accuracy during the process of data wireless transmission, the CNN algorithm is adopted to extract the robust feature from raw data. The measurement results show that the exploited RFID sensor can realize a maximum communication distance of 10.3 m and can accurately measure and predict the methane gas density in an underground mine. The RFID sensor technology is a beneficial supplement to the current underground WSN monitoring system.