Development of a Solar-Powered Wildfire Detector System for Remote Locations with XBee and GSM Capabilities BRALLAN ALVARES, ERIC PEREZ, JOSHUA TRIGUEROS, JERRY HO, ERIC LY, HA THU LE Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering California State Polytechnic University, Pomona Pomona city, California 91768 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Abstract — In the United States wildfires are rampant every year, taking lives, damaging properties and causing huge economic losses. This project designs a wildfire detector system using a Many-to-One communication method with XBee/Zigbee and GSM technologies. Testing of the prototypes has shown the system advantageous features, namely low-power, long-lasting, compact, scalable and communication-effective. The maximum power consumption of a Xbee fire detector and a GSM detector is 14W and 27W, respectively. In detection mode, the XBee detector consumes only 1.29W. The fire detectors are powered by solar panels and Ni-MH battery packs. A fully charged battery pack can sustain a detector up to around 19.3 hours in detection mode, and up to about 4.5 hours in alarm mode. The system has a high potential to be used for wide-area outdoor fire monitoring and detection. The covered area can be flexibly adjusted by varying the number of detectors. Early fire detection and alert provided by the system will enable timely responses that save human lives, as well as minimize property damages and other economic losses. Keywords — Fire alarm, GSM, solar PV, wildfire detector, XBee, Zigbee. Received: March 26, 2021. Revised: August 7, 2021. Accepted: August 21, 2021. Published: August 31, 2021. 1. Introduction The destruction of property and livelihoods caused by forest fires is becoming an alarming problem in the United States. According to the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC), there were 58,083 wildfires in 2018 and 71,499 wildfires in 2017. About 8.8 million acres were burned in 2018 and 10 million acres were destroyed by fire in 2017 [1]. Whether the fault lies in climate change, outdated infrastructure, or poor management, solutions to the wildfire situations are urgently needed. Unfortunately, so far few solutions are proposed. Until recently, the market has fire detection systems that are overly saturated with unnecessary features, such as optical camera sensors and image processing, resulting in high power devices that are impractical for use in remote areas such as forests where wildfires typically occur without detection [2, 3]. It follows that wildfire detectors of low power consumption are desirable. Another method to deal with wildfires effectively is to detect them early. Outdated and aging infrastructure such as overhead power transmission lines often cause forest fires. Since these power lines often run through isolated areas, these fires are mostly not detected until they become big enough for people to see from miles WSEAS TRANSACTIONS on COMPUTERS DOI: 10.37394/23205.2021.20.20 Brallan Alvares, Eric Perez, Joshua Trigueros, Jerry Ho, Eric Ly, Ha Thu Le E-ISSN: 2224-2872 189 Volume 20, 2021