203 research outputs found
EH Performance of an Hybrid Energy Harvester for Autonomous Nodes
This paper reports the Energy Harvesting (EH) performance of a hybrid energy harvester able to collect energy form different energy sources: thermal, solar and electromagnetic. The main block of the system is the quarter-wavelength patch antenna, operating in the Industrial, Scientific and Medical (ISM) frequency band 2.4-2.5 GHz. The antenna has been designed and optimized to support a Thermo-Electric Generator (TEG) and a Solar Cell on its top. Moreover, a rectifier has been designed to work with the antenna and a DC-DC converter has been used to manage the TEG output voltage
SUSTAINABLE ENERGY HARVESTING TECHNOLOGIES – PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE
Chapter 8: Energy Harvesting Technologies:
Thick-Film Piezoelectric Microgenerato
E-textile technology review - from materials to application
Wearable devices are ideal for personalized electronic applications in several domains such as healthcare, entertainment, sports and military. Although wearable technology is a growing market, current wearable devices are predominantly battery powered accessory devices, whose form factors also preclude them from utilizing the large area of the human body for spatiotemporal sensing or energy harvesting from body movements. E-textiles provide an opportunity to expand on current wearables to enable such applications via the larger surface area offered by garments, but consumer devices have been few and far between because of the inherent challenges in replicating traditional manufacturing technologies (that have enabled these wearable accessories) on textiles. Also, the powering of e-textile devices with battery energy like in wearable accessories, has proven incompatible with textile requirements for flexibility and washing. Although current e-textile research has shown advances in materials, new processing techniques, and one-off e-textile prototype devices, the pathway to industry scale commercialization is still uncertain. This paper reports the progress on the current technologies enabling the fabrication of e-textile devices and their power supplies including textile-based energy harvesters, energy storage mechanisms, and wireless power transfer solutions. It identifies factors that limit the adoption of current reported fabrication processes and devices in the industry for mass-market commercialization
Antenna and rectifier designs for miniaturized radio frequency energy scavenging systems
With ample radio transmitters scattered throughout urban landscape, RF
energy scavenging emerges as a promising approach to extract energy from
propagating radio waves in the ambient environment to continuously charge low
power electronics. With the ability of generating power from RF energy, the need for
batteries could be eliminated. The effective distance of a RF energy scavenging
system is highly dependent on its conversion efficiency. This results in significant
limitations on the mobility and space requirement of conventional RF energy
scavenging systems as they operate only in presence of physically large antennas and
conversion circuits to achieve acceptable efficiency. This thesis presents a number of
novel design strategies in the antenna and rectifier designs for miniaturized RF energy
scavenging system.
In the first stage, different energy scavenging systems including solar energy
scavenging system, thermoelectric energy scavenging system, wind energy
scavenging system, kinetic energy scavenging system, radio frequency energy
scavenging system and hybrid energy scavenging system are investigated with
regard to their principle and performance. Compared with the other systems, RF
energy scavenging system has its advantages on system size and power density with
relatively stable energy source. For a typical RF energy scavenging system, antenna
and rectifier (AC-DC convertor) are the two essential components to extract RF
energy and convert to usable electricity.
As the antenna occupies most of the area in the RF energy scavenging system,
reduction in antenna size is necessary in order to design a miniaturized system.
Several antennas with different characteristics are proposed in the second stage.
Firstly, ultra-wideband microstrip antennas printed on a thin substrate with a
thickness of 0.2 mm are designed for both half-wave and full-wave wideband RF
energy scavenging. Ambient RF power is distributed over a wide range of frequency
bands. A wideband RF energy scavenging system can extract power from different
frequencies to maximize the input power, hence, generating sufficient output power
for charging devices. Wideband operation with 4 GHz bandwidth is obtained by the
proposed microstrip antenna. Secondly, multi-band planar inverted-F antennas with
low profile are proposed for frequency bands of GSM 900, DCS 1800 and Wi-Fi 2.4
GHz, which are the three most promising frequency bands for RF energy scavenging.
Compared with previous designs, the triple band antenna has smaller dimensions
with higher antenna gain. Thirdly, a novel miniature inverted-F antenna without
empty space covering Wi-Fi 2.4 GHz frequency band is presented dedicated for
indoor RF energy scavenging. The antenna has dimensions of only 10 × 5 × 3.5
mm3 with appreciable efficiency across the operating frequency range.
In the final stage, a passive CMOS charge pump rectifier in 0.35 μm CMOS
technology is proposed for AC to DC conversion. Bootstrapping capacitors are
employed to reduce the effective threshold voltage drop of the selected MOS
transistors. Transistor sizes are optimized to be 200/0.5 μm. The proposed rectifier
achieves improvements in both power conversion efficiency and voltage conversion
efficiency compared with conventional designs.
The design strategies proposed in this thesis contribute towards the realization of
miniaturized RF energy scavenging systems
Harnessing energy for wearables: a review of radio frequency energy harvesting technologies
Wireless energy harvesting enables the conversion of ambient energy into electrical power for small wireless electronic devices. This technology offers numerous advantages, including availability, ease of implementation, wireless functionality, and cost-effectiveness. Radio frequency energy harvesting (RFEH) is a specific type of wireless energy harvesting that enables wireless power transfer by utilizing RF signals. RFEH holds immense potential for extending the lifespan of wireless sensors and wearable electronics that require low-power operation. However, despite significant advancements in RFEH technology for self-sustainable wearable devices, numerous challenges persist. This literature review focuses on three key areas: materials, antenna design, and power management, to delve into the research challenges of RFEH comprehensively. By providing an up-to-date review of research findings on RFEH, this review aims to shed light on the critical challenges, potential opportunities, and existing limitations. Moreover, it emphasizes the importance of further research and development in RFEH to advance its state-of-the-art and offer a vision for future trends in this technology
Energy harvesting technologies for structural health monitoring of airplane components - a review
With the aim of increasing the efficiency of maintenance and fuel usage in airplanes, structural health monitoring (SHM) of critical composite structures is increasingly expected and required. The optimized usage of this concept is subject of intensive work in the framework of the EU COST Action CA18203 "Optimising Design for Inspection" (ODIN). In this context, a thorough review of a broad range of energy harvesting (EH) technologies to be potentially used as power sources for the acoustic emission and guided wave propagation sensors of the considered SHM systems, as well as for the respective data elaboration and wireless communication modules, is provided in this work. EH devices based on the usage of kinetic energy, thermal gradients, solar radiation, airflow, and other viable energy sources, proposed so far in the literature, are thus described with a critical review of the respective specific power levels, of their potential placement on airplanes, as well as the consequently necessary power management architectures. The guidelines provided for the selection of the most appropriate EH and power management technologies create the preconditions to develop a new class of autonomous sensor nodes for the in-process, non-destructive SHM of airplane components.The work of S. Zelenika, P. Gljušcic, E. Kamenar and Ž. Vrcan is partly enabled by using
the equipment funded via the EU European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) project no. RC.2.2.06-0001:
“Research Infrastructure for Campus-based Laboratories at the University of Rijeka (RISK)” and partly supported
by the University of Rijeka, Croatia, project uniri-tehnic-18-32 „Advanced mechatronics devices for smart
technological solutions“. Z. Hadas, P. Tofel and O. Ševecek acknowledge the support provided via the Czech
Science Foundation project GA19-17457S „Manufacturing and analysis of flexible piezoelectric layers for smart
engineering”. J. Hlinka, F. Ksica and O. Rubes gratefully acknowledge the financial support provided by the
ESIF, EU Operational Programme Research, Development and Education within the research project Center of
Advanced Aerospace Technology (Reg. No.: CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_019/0000826) at the Faculty of Mechanical
Engineering, Brno University of Technology. V. Pakrashi would like to acknowledge UCD Energy Institute, Marine
and Renewable Energy Ireland (MaREI) centre Ireland, Strengthening Infrastructure Risk Assessment in the
Atlantic Area (SIRMA) Grant No. EAPA\826/2018, EU INTERREG Atlantic Area and Aquaculture Operations with
Reliable Flexible Shielding Technologies for Prevention of Infestation in Offshore and Coastal Areas (FLEXAQUA),
MarTera Era-Net cofund PBA/BIO/18/02 projects. The work of J.P.B. Silva is partially supported by the Portuguese
Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) in the framework of the Strategic Funding UIDB/FIS/04650/2020.
M. Mrlik gratefully acknowledges the support of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech
Republic-DKRVO (RP/CPS/2020/003
Graphene and Related Materials for the Internet of Bio-Nano Things
Internet of Bio-Nano Things (IoBNT) is a transformative communication
framework, characterized by heterogeneous networks comprising both biological
entities and artificial micro/nano-scale devices, so-called Bio-Nano Things
(BNTs), interfaced with conventional communication networks for enabling
innovative biomedical and environmental applications. Realizing the potential
of IoBNT requires the development of new and unconventional communication
technologies, such as molecular communications, as well as the corresponding
transceivers, bio-cyber interfacing technologies connecting the biochemical
domain of IoBNT to the electromagnetic domain of conventional networks, and
miniaturized energy harvesting and storage components for the continuous power
supply to BNTs. Graphene and related materials (GRMs) exhibit exceptional
electrical, optical, biochemical, and mechanical properties, rendering them
ideal candidates for addressing the challenges posed by IoBNT. This perspective
article highlights recent advancements in GRM-based device technologies that
are promising for implementing the core components of IoBNT. By identifying the
unique opportunities afforded by GRMs and aligning them with the practical
challenges associated with IoBNT, particularly in the materials domain, our aim
is to accelerate the transition of envisaged IoBNT applications from
theoretical concepts to practical implementations, while also uncovering new
application areas for GRMs
Rectenna circuits for RF energy harvesting in miniature DBS devices.
Development of an optimum rectenna for radio frequency energy harvesting in miniature head-mountable deep brain stimulation (DBS) devices. The designed miniature rectenna can operate a DBS device without battery for murine preclinical research. The battery-less operation of the device eliminates battery related difficulties
Advanced Energy Harvesting Technologies
Energy harvesting is the conversion of unused or wasted energy in the ambient environment into useful electrical energy. It can be used to power small electronic systems such as wireless sensors and is beginning to enable the widespread and maintenance-free deployment of Internet of Things (IoT) technology. This Special Issue is a collection of the latest developments in both fundamental research and system-level integration. This Special Issue features two review papers, covering two of the hottest research topics in the area of energy harvesting: 3D-printed energy harvesting and triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs). These papers provide a comprehensive survey of their respective research area, highlight the advantages of the technologies and point out challenges in future development. They are must-read papers for those who are active in these areas. This Special Issue also includes ten research papers covering a wide range of energy-harvesting techniques, including electromagnetic and piezoelectric wideband vibration, wind, current-carrying conductors, thermoelectric and solar energy harvesting, etc. Not only are the foundations of these novel energy-harvesting techniques investigated, but the numerical models, power-conditioning circuitry and real-world applications of these novel energy harvesting techniques are also presented
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