Solar and RF Energy Harvesting Design Model for Sustainable Wireless Sensor Tags

Modern society expects connectivity and autonomy amidst the internet of things (IoT) paradigm. Automation and sustainability of consumer and industrial systems is paramount to satisfy demand and transform standards. Low-power wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have proven widely successful for bridging the gap but typically depend on batteries. The next generation of devices can be batteryless or self-sustainable with energy harvesting (EH). This work presents an EH design and analysis model for a system to collect solar and radio frequency energy and store the energy until needed for WSN activities. The viability of the model is demonstrated with two micro-controller-based implementations and applied to data center monitoring.