Harvesting energy from aircraft power lines

Abstract

There are two simple methods of supplying power to a wireless, low-power sensor in an aircraft: a battery, or direct access to the aircraft power line. In the former, the battery will eventually need to be replaced whilst the latter option, which is highly intrusive and difficult to retrofit into existing aircraft, increases the weight and presents installation issues when large numbers of sensors are deployed. This paper presents initial experimental results of a non-intrusive method of harvesting energy by induction from aircraft power lines, in order to supply power to an aircraft wireless sensing application. The harvester comprises an inductive coil wound around a magnetic core, with the complete setup clamped around a single-phase AC power line.