Prototyping a RF signal-based lightning warning device using with Internet of Things (IOT) integration

Abstract

Lightning had caused at least 25, 000 deaths worldwide each year. The study aims to investigate the induced voltage generated by lightning strikes using a lightning detector. Proteus software was employed to simulate the main board of the lightning detector before fabrication. The lightning detector was designed as a radio frequencies receiver and it was tuned to the level (300 kHz to 500 kHz) which enabled it to receive signals from lightning strikes. A lightning simulator was designed using various resistance (100 Ω to 200 Ω) to test the functionality of a lightning detector in order to validate the accuracy of the proposed model. This lightning detector could be activated whenever a small induced voltage (0.2 V and above) were generated by lightning events occurred within 10 km from the detector. This detector captures both the induced voltage and the time difference detected lightning discharge and its sound for further analysis. The time to thunder method was employed to find the estimated lightning discharges distances in parallel to this system in order to validate the current lightning detector. The accuracy of the lightning detector was found to be 88.03%.The analysed data were delivered to the user's smartphone using cloud system.