Energy Harvesting Autonomous Sensor Systems

Energy Harvesting Autonomous Sensor Systems: Design, Analysis, and Practical Implementation provides a wide range of coverage of various energy harvesting techniques to enable the development of a truly self-autonomous and sustainable energy harvesting wireless sensor network (EH-WSN). It supplies a practical overview of the entire EH-WSN system from energy source all the way to energy usage by wireless sensor nodes/network.

After an in-depth review of existing energy harvesting research thus far, the book focuses on:

• Outlines two wind energy harvesting (WEH) approaches, one using a wind turbine generator and one a piezoelectric wind energy harvester
• Covers thermal energy harvesting (TEH) from ambient heat sources with low temperature differences
• Presents two types of piezoelectric-based vibration energy harvesting systems to harvest impact or impulse forces from a human pressing a button or switch action
• Examines hybrid energy harvesting approaches that augment the reliability of the wireless sensor node’s operation
• Discusses a hybrid wind and solar energy harvesting scheme to simultaneously use both energy sources and therefore extend the lifetime of the wireless sensor node
• Explores a hybrid of indoor ambient light and TEH scheme that uses only one power management circuit to condition the combined output power harvested from both energy sources

Although the author focuses on small-scale energy harvesting, the systems discussed can be upsized to large-scale renewable energy harvesting systems. The book goes beyond theory to explore practical applications that not only solve real-life energy issues but pave the way for future work in this area.