5G-enabled, battery-less smart skins for self-monitoring megastructures and digital twin applications

With the current development of the 5G infrastructure, there presents a unique opportunity for the deployment of battery-less mmWave reflect-array-based sensors. These fully-passive devices benefit from having a larger detectability than alternative battery-less solutions to create self-monitoring megastructures. The presented ‘smart’ skin sensor uses a Van-Atta array design enabling ubiquitous local strain monitoring for the structural health monitoring of composite materials featuring wide interrogation angles. Proof-of-concept prototypes of these ‘smart’ skin millimeter-wave identification tags, that can be mounted on or embedded within common materials used in wind turbine blades, present a highly-detectable radar cross-section of − 33.75 dBsm and − 35.00 dBsm for mounted and embedded sensors respectively. Both sensors display a minimum resolution of 202 \(\upmu \) $\mathrm{\mu }$ -strain even at 40 \(^{\circ }\) ${}^{\circ }$ off-axis enabling interrogation of the fully-passive sensor at oblique angles of incidence. When interrogated from a proof-of-concept reader, the fully-passive, sticker-like mmID enables local strain monitoring of both carbon fiber and glass fiber composite materials. The sensors display a repeatable and recoverable response over 0–3000 \(\upmu \) $\mathrm{\mu }$ -strain and a sensitivity of 7.55 kHz/ \(\upmu \) $\mathrm{\mu }$ -strain and 7.92 kHz/ \(\upmu \) $\mathrm{\mu }$ -strain for mounted and embedded sensors, respectively. Thus, the presented 5G-enabled battery-less sensor presents massive potential for the development of ubiquitous Digital Twinning of composite materials in future smart cities architectures.