Patent ID: 8206862

Claim:
A system for communicating measurement data from fuel cells in a fuel cell stack, said system comprising: a plurality of fuel cells that each create a voltage potential; a plurality of stack plates including one stack plate between each fuel cell and on each end of the fuel cell stack to collect the voltage potential generated by each of the fuel cells; a plurality of embedded smart plates, each embedded smart plate being mechanically and electrically coupled to at least one of the plurality of stack plates in the fuel cell stack, each embedded smart plate including optical transceivers on the top side and the bottom side of the embedded smart plate, each of the embedded smart plates receiving operating power from the fuel cell stack via the voltage potential from the fuel cell adjacent to the stack plate that the embedded smart plate is coupled to; and a first aggregator device located at one end of the plurality of embedded smart plates in the fuel cell stack, and a second aggregator device at the other end of the plurality of embedded smart plates in the stack, said first and second aggregator devices including at least one optical transceiver for communicating with the embedded smart plates, wherein the first aggregator device initiates communication with the embedded smart plates such that the embedded smart plates communicate in series through the stack until the second aggregator device completes communication after receiving the communication from the last embedded smart plate in the stack.