Human-motion adaptability enhancement of wearable electromagnetic vibration energy harvesters toward self-sustained body sensor networks

Abstract

As a critical element of the technological infrastructure of body sensor networks (BSNs), wearable electromagnetic vibration energy harvesters (EMVEHs) are a competitive candidate for breaking through the development bottleneck of BSNs’ sustainability, and thus facilitating their self-sustained operations with versatile functions. To this end, the prior concern of wearable EMVEHs is to enhance their adaptability to complex biomechanics of human motions for better power generation performance. Given the state-of-the-art progress of this BSN enabling technology, we provide a comprehensive and in-depth summary of recent excitation-adaptive designs of miniaturized wearable EMVEHs focusing on their insightful vibration pick-up structures here, to systematically clarify a developing roadmap of this branch of science and then offer inspirations for the underway endeavors focused on energy harvesting from human motions. In this way, we try to lift the impacts of current innovative efforts in this field and corresponding BSN achievements to a higher level.