Design and Implementation of Ultrasonic
Anemometer
Vipin Prakash Yadav, Alakh Sinha, Arun Khosla
Dr. B. R. Ambedkar National Institute of Technology, Jalandhar, Punjab, India
{vipin.nitj, alakh.nitj, arun.khosla}@gmail.com
AbstractThis paper deal with the design and implementation of
low cost, indigenous 2-axis ultrasonic anemometer having real time
SD card and Internet of Things (IOT) enabled data logging.
Ultrasonic Anemometer is a measuring instrument which is
capable of measuring wind velocity (i.e. both wind speed and
direction) in a challenging environment like ladakh where
conventional type anemometers are not working properly.
Commercial Off-the-Shelf (COTS) component are used for the
implementation which reduce the implementation cost and
improve the efficiency. Wind velocity measurement is done using
Time of Flight (TOF) concept, Threshold detection is used to detect
the Ultrasonic signal. Arduino development board and Integrated
Development Environment (IDE) is used for the implementation.
Multisim by National Instrument is also used to design and
simulate sub-component of receiver circuit like amplifiers and
band pass filter. Internal timer of microcontroller is used to
calculate the delay between the transmitted and received ultrasonic
signal. SD card module and IOT module with Real Time Clock
(RTC) module is used to store the wind data with timing
information.
KeywordsTof; Ultrasonic sound; MPPT; IDE
I. INTRODUCTION
Due to the increasing concern about the depletion of natural
resources such as fossil fuels and due to environmental pollution
and global warming problems, Renewable energy (wind, solar,
hydro etc.) are attracting more attention as alternative energy
sources for conventional fossil fuel energy sources [1,2]. To
fulfill the future power requirement for our planet natural
renewable sources are being closely studied. Wind energy is
inexhaustible, environmentally friendly, safe and capable of
supplying sufficient amount of future energy requirement. Global
Wind Energy Council and Greenpeace International released
data on 2014 edition of the Global Wind Energy Outlook and
according to that wind power could reach 2,000 GW and supply
up to 17-19% of global electricity by 2030 and reduce CO2
emissions by more than 3 b.tn. per year [3].
The application of anemometer is in the field of weather
forecasting, marine operation, Aviation, bridge building,
environmental monitoring, security and defence and scientific
research but the wind power generation industry is the biggest
consumer of anemometer worldwide. According to a report on
metrology related to the European FP6 project Upwind [4] in the
Section 1.1 indicates that the development of wind energy is slow
down by measurement problems. More accurate measurement
for wind energy system is required, as small error in wind
measurement introduce large error in power prediction (the wind
power is proportional to the third power of the wind speed). Over
978-1-5090-4426-9/17/$31.00 2017 IEEE
recent decades the wind energy generation sector has been
supported by governments, concerned about clean energies and
reducing their fossil fuels dependencies [5]. So, the installation
of wind turbine increases day by day. It seems reasonable to
assume that the huge demand of accurate anemometers from
wind energy sector will continue in the coming years
Anemometer is a very important component in wind energy
system used for data acquisition for wind turbine installation,
Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) algorithm and to
generate control signal (like cut-in and cut-off speed) which is
essential for optimal performance, safe operation, and structural
stability of turbines [6]. Wind turbines will be expected to
significantly increase the power outputs with improved wind
speed and direction measurement system. For accurate
measurement of wind speed and direction ultrasonic anemometer
are used which is having many advantage over conventional type
anemometer like, not containing any moving parts, having fast
response to rapid wind gust, lower starting threshold, low
maintenance and continued functioning during icing conditions.
Ultrasonic anemometers operate on the principle that the time
required for an ultrasonic wave to travel between two point is
affected by the speed of the wind. If the direction of sound is
opposite to the direction of wind the time required is more and
vice-versa [7].
II. WIND VELOCITY CALCULATION
The concept of TOF is having a wide variety of applications
in engineering field and can also be used to find the wind velocity
when ultrasonic sound is used. For wind velocity measurement,
we place the transducer in pass through configuration (i.e.
transmitter is on one side and receiver on the opposite side) which
is separated by a fixed distance d as shown in Fig.1 for accurate
measurement of wind velocity, we have to find the delay (t12 &
t21) between the transmitted and received signal. t12 is the
delay when S1 and S2 is working as a Transmitter (Tx) and
Receiver (Rx) respectively.
Wind
S1 S2
d
Figure 1. Sensor arrangement for wind speed calculationt21 is the delay
 when S1 and S2 is working as an Rx and Tx respectively. If we And wind direction as,
assume the direction of the wind from S1 to S2 then t12 and t21
can be calculated as, Vy
= tan 1
d Vx (7)
t12 =
V +U (1)

d
t 21 = (2)
V U
Where, V is speed of wind and U is speed of ultrasonic sound
wave which is generated by the ultrasonic transducer. The value
of the t12 is calculated by the internal timer of the microcontroller.
So from (1) or (2) alone we can find the speed of the wind. But
(1) and (2) contain the term U which is very critical term. The
value of U is dependent on many factor like temperature,
humidity etc. [8,9]. So to overcome from this dependency
Signal Routing Unit (SRU)
problem we combine (1) & (2) as [8],

d 1 1
V= Amplifier
2 t12 t 21 Axis
(3) and
40 kHz
direction Signal 40kHz Bandpass filter
From (3) it is clear that V is independent from the term U. select

For the measurement of the wind speed and direction we have to

place 4 ultrasonic transceivers in a horizontal X-Y plane one in Threshold Detection
each direction as shown in Fig.2. With this setup from

N- North, S- South Controller Unit

N
E- East, W- West

V V Display SD Card Wi-Fi Real Time

W E Module Module Clock

Vx Figure 3. Block diagram of Prototype

III. PROTOTYPE
S
For prototyping ATmega 2560 microcontroller based
Figure 2. Placement of sensor in horizontal X-Y plane development board and Arduino IDE is used, architecture for the
prototype is as shown in Fig. 3. ATmega 2560 is used to, generate
(3) we can find two wind velocity vector i.e. Vx and Vy which the square wave of 40 kHz which is used to excite the ultrasonic
can be calculated as, sensor to generate the ultrasonic signal, control the signal routing
unit, calculate the delay using internal timer, and to interface the
L 1 1
Vx = storing and display unit. For data acquisition from the
2 TE W TW E anemometer ESP 12E Wi-Fi module is used to store the data in
(4)
the cloud so that the person can see the data at any time
anywhere.SD card module is also used as an alternative so that in
L 1 1
Vy = case of connectivity loss data can be store in the SD card in .csv
2 TS N TN S or .xlsx format. RTC module is used to store the timing
(5)
information. Data is also send to serial port so that user can also
Now from (4) & (5) we can find wind speed as, access the data at serial port of the connected terminal. A LCD is
also used to show the wind data.
Vwind = (Vx )2 + (V y )2
(6)
Ultrasonic anemometer which is having five important
components, sensor unit, signal routing unit (SRU), signal
detector unit, control unit and display and storage unit.
A. Sensor Unit
Four multicomp MCUSD16A40S12RO ultrasonic ceramic
transducers (one for each direction) are used for receiving and
transmitting ultrasonic waves which is highly reliable, water
proof, light weight, high sensitivity and less power
receiver circuit. So this switching from transmitter to receiver or
receiver to transmitter and signal routing from control unit to Tx
and Rx to receiver circuit is done by signal routing unit along
with control unit. For signal routing 4052B IC (Dual 4-channel
Analog Multiplexer/Demultiplexer) with common channel select
logic (S0 and S1) is used.

Figure 4. Multicomp Ultrasonic Transducers

consuming. Which is having a center frequency 40 kHz with 1

kHz tolerance over a temperature range of -35C to +85C and
having a sensitivity of -65dB/V/bar at 40 kHz and directivity of
50 [10]. Transmitted and received signal from Multicomp
transducer for short duration of transmitted signal is as shown in
Fig. 5. Figure 6. Pin Diagram of 4052B IC

Each multiplexer/demultiplexer has four independent

inputs/outputs (nY0 to nY3) and a common input/output (nZ).
This IC has wide analog input voltage range from -5 V to +5 V
and can be used for wide temperature range from -40 C to +85
C [12]. Here S1 is used to select the axis (i.e. and )
and S0 is used to select the direction ( , , and
).
TABLE I. WORKING OF SIGNAL ROUTING UNIT

S0 S1 (Direction) Transmitter Receiver Delay

(Axis)
0 0 South North TS-N
Figure 5. Tx and Rx signal from Multicomp transducer 0 1 West East TW-E
1 0 North South TN-S
B. Signal routing unit (SRU) 1 1 East West TE-W
Signal routing is used to control the sensor operation and to C. Signal detection unit
reduce the hardware complexity by reusing the transmitter and
receiver circuit. Calculation of wind velocity is done by using a
time sharing method. There are 2-axis, and axis
each axis having two directions (in case of axis,
and ), delay for both the direction and axis has to be . .
calculated one after another for wind velocity calculation. TN-S
and TS-N are the delay for N-S axis for and A B
direction respectively and TE-W and TW-E are the delay for the E-
W axis for and direction respectively. When TN-
S is calculated, North sensor is working as a transmitter and South
sensor is working as a receiver and 40 kHz signal generated from Transmitted signal Threshold
the control unit is routed to North sensor and the received signal
from the south sensor is routed to receiver circuit and in case of
TS-N calculation South sensor is working as a Transmitter and Figure 7. Delay calculation process
North sensor is working as receiver and 40 kHz signal routed to
South sensor and received signal is routed from North sensor to
 The delay between the transmitted and received signal
is calculated using internal timer of the microcontroller. Fig. 7
shows the transmitted and received signal. Delay is define as a
time between the instant when signal is transmitted from the
sensor (i.e. point A) and the instant when the signal received form
the sensor crosses a predefined threshold level (i.e. point B). So
for the calculation of the delay the internal timer of
microcontroller records the time between these two instants (or
between point A and B as shown in Fig. 7). So a receiver circuit
is required to detect the received signal and for the generation of
a control signal to interrupt the microcontroller to stop the timer.
Control Receiver
Unit Sensor
Threshold Amplifier 40 kHz Band- Amplifier
Detection Gain=8
Pass Filter Gain=8
Figure 8. Block diagram of the signal detection unit
Fig. 8 shows the block diagram of the receiver circuit. The
received signal first passes from the amplifier stage to increase
the strength of the signal after that it passes through the
Figure 9. Circuit diagram of the designed band pass filter.
Figure 10. Frequency response of the band pass filter
multiple feedback band pass filter which is having a center
frequency of 40 kHz and bandwidth of 13.615 kHz, to remove
the unwanted frequency component. Opamp based multiple
feedback band pass filter is designed and simulated on orcad
multisim software. The designed filter and its frequency response
is as shown in Fig. 8 and Fig. 9 respectively. After that filtered
signal is again passes through an amplifier stage and now
threshold detection is used to detect the signal. Threshold
detection circuit generates a control signal when the received
signal level crosses the threshold value and that control signal is
used as an interrupt to stop the timer.
IV. RESULT
The accuracy of the ultrasonic anemometer depends on the
accuracy of the delay measurement. For delay measurement the
ultrasonic transducer is placed at different distances at 25.8 C.
For each distance, 10 measurements are performed and average
delay is calculated by taking average of these 10 measurements.
Then error between average delay and theoretical delay is
calculated. It is observed that when the separation between the
sensors is up to 9cm the error in delay is considerably high and
when the separation is further increased beyond 9cm then the
error in delay is saturated and maximum error value is 2.9% as
shown in Fig. 13. Fig. 12 shows the variation between the
practical (measured) delay and theoretical delay for different
separation between the ultrasonic sensor at 25.8 C. Both
practical and measured delay follow the same trend and the
practical delay is having linear variation same as the theoretical
delay.
Figure 11. Final prototype of Ultrasonic Anemometer
Fig. 13 shows the variation of error in delay measurement. The
error is larger when the separation between the sensor is in range
of 6 to 9 cm and for the separation between the sensor greater
than 9cm the error of delay measurement is in between 2.91 to
1.65 percent. In the proposed prototype the sensor separation is
16cm and the error at 16cm is 2.25 percent.
 Variation of practical and theoretical delay at 25.8 oC
temprature
1000.00
900.00
800.00
700.00
Delay

600.00
500.00
400.00
300.00
200.00
100.00
Figure 15(b). Side view of wind tunnel
0.00 In laboratory we are unable to generate the wind speed higher
6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
than 7m/s so the accuracy measurement is restricted at 7m/s and
Distance between the Ultrasonic Sensor it is 1.9 m/s at 7 m/s.
Practical Delay value Theoretical Delay value
V. OUTPUTS
Figure 12. Variation of practical and theoretical delay Wind data is displayed on the LCD instead of this implemented
prototype gives output in different form,
Error in Delay calculation
12.00 Wind Data is available at serial port of the connected terminal as
shown in Fig. 16, in the following format,
10.00
Data Format <TN-S> <TS-N> <TE-W> <TW-E> <Wind Speed>
8.00 <Date> <Day> <Time>
% Error

6.00

4.00

2.00

0.00
6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30
Distance between the Ultrasonic Sensor
Figure 16. Data available at connected terminal

Figure 13. Variation of error in delay measurement with sensors separation
For verification purpose of the prototype a wind tunnel is
implemented which is having the following architecture as
shown in Fig. 14.
Wind Data is also store in SD Card in .xlsx or .csv Format by
using Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) protocol as shown in
Fig.17 in the following format,
Data Format <Wind Speed> <Date> <Day> <Time>

Figure 14. Architecture of implemented wind tunnel

Figure 17. Data store in SD card in .xlsx format

Wind data is also uploaded on thingspeak server as shown in

Fig.18 so that user can assess the wind data at any time anywhere.
ThingSpeak is an open source platform for Internet of
Figure 15(a). Side view of wind tunnel
Things (IOT) application and Application programming
interface (API) to store Data [12].
Figure 18. Data at thingspeak channel
Available@ thingspeak.com/channels/62978
VI. CONCLUSION
This work presents the Design and Implementation of Four
Arm, 2-Dimentional, Low Cost, Indigenous and IOT Enabled
Ultrasonic Anemometer, which is capable of measuring the wind
speed. The implemented prototype is a stand-alone system they
do not require any computer or extra hardware for their operation.
Wind calculation is independent from the effect of ambient
temperature so measurement made by the prototype is also
temperature independent. The implemented porotype having
advantages of Low cost, Less complexity, suitable for wind
energy system and other applications. The wind reading from the
prototype is quite fluctuating so a three length moving average
filter is applied on the prototype output to remove the
fluctuations. Response time of implemented prototype is 43.74
ms (i.e. able to measure 20 reading in 1 second)
VII. FUTURE SCOPE
The accuracy can be improved, by Sensor placement as three
arm ultrasonic anemometer is more accurate than the four arm
ultrasonic anemometer because they give one path redundancy in
the measurement, which improves the accuracy or by using more
accurate timer for delay calculation as the accuracy of wind
measurement is dependent on accuracy of the timer used, so by
using more accurate timer the accuracy of the wind measurement
can be improved. The accuracy can also be improved by using
more accurate detection technique for ultrasonic signal.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Authors are thankful to Dr. Amit Agarwal for their motivation
and support. Authors also like to thank Thingspeak for providing
open data platform for Internet of Things application.
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