322 research outputs found

    ULTRA LOW POWER FSK RECEIVER AND RF ENERGY HARVESTER

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    This thesis focuses on low power receiver design and energy harvesting techniques as methods for intelligently managing energy usage and energy sources. The goal is to build an inexhaustibly powered communication system that can be widely applied, such as through wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Low power circuit design and smart power management are techniques that are often used to extend the lifetime of such mobile devices. Both methods are utilized here to optimize power usage and sources. RF energy is a promising ambient energy source that is widely available in urban areas and which we investigate in detail. A harvester circuit is modeled and analyzed in detail at low power input. Based on the circuit analysis, a design procedure is given for a narrowband energy harvester. The antenna and harvester co-design methodology improves RF to DC energy conversion efficiency. The strategy of co-design of the antenna and the harvester creates opportunities to optimize the system power conversion efficiency. Previous surveys have found that ambient RF energy is spread broadly over the frequency domain; however, here it is demonstrated that it is theoretically impossible to harvest RF energy over a wide frequency band if the ambient RF energy source(s) are weak, owing to the voltage requirements. It is found that most of the ambient RF energy lies in a series of narrow bands. Two different versions of harvesters have been designed, fabricated, and tested. The simulated and measured results demonstrate a dual-band energy harvester that obtains over 9% efficiency for two different bands (900MHz and 1800MHz) at an input power as low as -19dBm. The DC output voltage of this harvester is over 1V, which can be used to recharge the battery to form an inexhaustibly powered communication system. A new phase locked loop based receiver architecture is developed to avoid the significant conversion losses associated with OOK architectures. This also helps to minimize power consumption. A new low power mixer circuit has also been designed, and a detailed analysis is provided. Based on the mixer, a low power phase locked loop (PLL) based receiver has been designed, fabricated and measured. A power management circuit and a low power transceiver system have also been co-designed to provide a system on chip solution. The low power voltage regulator is designed to handle a variety of battery voltage, environmental temperature, and load conditions. The whole system can work with a battery and an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) as a sensor node of a WSN network

    Low-profile antenna systems for the Next-Generation Internet of Things applications

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    Vibration energy harvesters for wireless sensor networks for aircraft health monitoring

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    Traditional power supply for wireless sensor nodes is batteries. However, the application of batteries in WSN has been limited due to their large size, low capacity, limited working life, and replacement cost. With rapid advancements in microelectronics, power consumption of WSN is getting lower and hence the energy harvested from ambient may be sufficient to power the tiny sensor nodes and eliminate batteries completely. As vibration is the widespread ambient source that exists in abundance on an aircraft, a WSN node system used for aircraft health monitoring powered by a piezoelectric energy harvester was designed and manufactured. Furthermore, simulations were performed to validate the design and evaluate the performance. In addition, the Z-Stack protocol was migrated to run on the system and initial experiments were carried out to analyse the current consumption of the system. A new approach for power management was reported, the execution of the operations were determined by the amount of the energy stored on the capacitor. A novel power saving interface was also developed to minimise the power consumption during the voltage measurement

    Low power CMOS IC, biosensor and wireless power transfer techniques for wireless sensor network application

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    The emerging field of wireless sensor network (WSN) is receiving great attention due to the interest in healthcare. Traditional battery-powered devices suffer from large size, weight and secondary replacement surgery after the battery life-time which is often not desired, especially for an implantable application. Thus an energy harvesting method needs to be investigated. In addition to energy harvesting, the sensor network needs to be low power to extend the wireless power transfer distance and meet the regulation on RF power exposed to human tissue (specific absorption ratio). Also, miniature sensor integration is another challenge since most of the commercial sensors have rigid form or have a bulky size. The objective of this thesis is to provide solutions to the aforementioned challenges

    A Novel Transparent UWB Antenna for Photovoltaic Solar Panel Integration and RF Energy Harvesting

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    A novel transparent ultra-wideband antenna for photovoltaic solar-panel integration and RF energy harvesting is proposed in this paper. Since the approval by the Federal Communications Committee (FCC) in 2002, much research has been undertaken on UWB technology, especially for wireless communications. However, in the last decade, UWB has also been proposed as a power harvester. In this paper, a transparent cone-top-tapered slot antenna covering the frequency range from 2.2 to 12.1 GHz is designed and fabricated to provide UWB communications whilst integrated onto solar panels as well as harvest electromagnetic waves from free space and convert them into electrical energy. The antenna when sandwiched between an a-Si solar panel and glass is able to demonstrate a quasi omni-directional pattern that is characteristic of a UWB. The antenna when connected to a 2.55-GHz rectifier is able to produce 18-mV dc in free space and 4.4-mV dc on glass for an input power of 10 dBm at a distance of 5 cm. Although the antenna presented in this paper is a UWB antenna, only an operating range of 2.49 to 2.58 GHz for power scavenging is possible due to the limitation of the narrowband rectifier used for the study

    Feasibility of Ambient RF Energy Harvesting for Self-Sustainable M2M Communications Using Transparent and Flexible Graphene Antennas

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    Lifetime is a critical parameter in ubiquitous, battery-operated sensors for machine-to-machine (M2M) communication systems, an emerging part of the future Internet of Things. In this practical article, the performance of radio frequency (RF) to DC energy converters using transparent and flexible rectennas based on graphene in an ambient RF energyharvesting scenario is evaluated. Full-wave EM simulations of a dipole antenna assuming the reported state-of-the-art sheet resistance for few-layer, transparent graphene yields an estimated ohmic efficiency of 5 %. In the power budget calculation, the low efficiency of transparent graphene antennas is an issue because of the relatively low amount of available ambient RF energy in the frequency bands of interest, which together sets an upper limit on the harvested energy available for the RF-powered device. Using a commercial diode rectifier and an off-the-shelf wireless system for sensor communication, the graphene-based solution provides only a limited battery lifetime extension. However, for ultra-low-power technologies currently at the research stage, more advantageous ambient energy levels, or other use cases with infrequent data transmission, graphene-based solutions may be more feasible
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