Energy-efficient acoustic communication using vibration energy harvesting

With the ubiquity of microphone-enabled pervasive device, the use of speaker-microphone to transfer small piece of information has become a hot area in both industry and research communities. Unfortunately, however, microphone-based acoustic communication systems rely on power-consuming digital signal processing (DSP) to decode the modulated information in the sound. Given the battery lifetime of today's mobile devices is limited, microphone-based systems are facing challenges in achieving long-term computing and communication. In this proposal, we aim to investigates the possibility of using a vibration energy harvesting (VEH) device as an receiver for energy-efficient acoustic communication. By modulating the ambient vibration energy using a transmitting speaker, and demodulating the harvested power at the receiving VEH, our current system prototype [1] is able to transmit small amounts of data at reasonable rates between two proximate devices. The key advantage of using VEH as a receiver is that the modulated sound waves can be successfully demodulated directly from the harvested power without employing the power-consuming DSP, which makes a VEH receiver more power efficient than a conventional microphone-based decoder. As part of our future work, we will further improve and optimize the performance of our prototype system while ensure better user experience and system security.