Energy Harvesting for Autonomous Wireless Sensor Platforms

Abstract

Energy harvesting technologies are particularly suitable for miniature wireless sensing platforms which require a small amount of power to operate and have limited energy storage capability due to the fact that batteries limit their performance due to requirements such as for example, small size, reduced weight, sufficient capacity or environmental concerns associated with spent batteries. While the physical phenomena behind such harvesting technologies have been typically known for many years, recent advances in low power circuit design, material science, low power micro controllers and fabrication technologies, such as additive manufacturing, have enabled the optimization and integration of multiple energy harvesters in low power wireless sensors with small form factors in order to increase energy autonomy and enable their use in diverse application scenarios. This paper presents selected advances in the field of energy harvesting for wireless sensing platforms.