Multi-source ambient energy harvester based on RF and thermal energy: Design, testing, and IoT application
Type
ArticleAuthors
Bakytbekov, Azamat
Nguyen, Thang Q.
Li, Weiwei

Lee Cottrill, Anton
Zhang, Ge
Strano, Michael S.
Salama, Khaled N.

Shamim, Atif

KAUST Department
Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Science and Engineering Department King Abdullah University of Science and Technology Thuwal Saudi ArabiaComputer, Electrical and Mathematical Sciences and Engineering (CEMSE) Division
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering Program
Integrated Microwave Packaging Antennas and Circuits Technology (IMPACT) Lab
Sensors Lab
Date
2020-07-28Online Publication Date
2020-07-28Print Publication Date
2020-11Submitted Date
2020-06-20Permanent link to this record
http://hdl.handle.net/10754/664533
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Billions of wireless sensing devices must be powered for IoT applications. Collecting energy from the ambient environment to power sensor nodes is a promising solution. Solar energy has been one of the main sources of ambient energy due to its availability, higher power density, and the maturity of the solar photovoltaic industry. However, there are many scenarios (indoor environment, outdoor environment during nighttime, poor weather conditions, underground, etc) where ambient solar energy is either not available or not sufficient for practical applications. For such scenarios, other renewable sources of energy must be sought. Typically, not enough power is collected from one ambient source to charge sensor nodes for continuous operation. In this work, we present a multi-source energy harvester that collects RF and thermal energy (both available 24 hours) from the ambient environment simultaneously. The RF energy harvester is multi-band and collects power from GSM (900, 1800 MHz) and 3G (2100 MHz). The thermal harvester converts diurnal temperature fluctuations to electrical energy using high thermal effusivity phase change material. Extensive field testing has been performed in three different conditions—outdoors, indoors, and buried underground—to highlight the usefulness of the multi-source energy harvester in all these environments. When one source is disabled, the harvester still generates energy from the remaining active source and can enable continuous operation of futuristic IoT sensors. As a proof of concept, a real-world IoT application is demonstrated, where temperature and humidity sensors are powered by the multi-source energy harvester. Continuous robust operation of the sensors and wireless data transmission after each 3.7 seconds are expected when both harvesters operate in full mode. Scenarios, where only single thermal energy harvester or only single RF energy harvester operates, are also demonstrated and data transmission with average time intervals of 30 seconds and 9 minutes is achieved, respectively.Citation
Bakytbekov, A., Nguyen, T. Q., Li, W., Lee Cottrill, A., Zhang, G., Strano, M. S., … Shamim, A. (2020). Multi-source ambient energy harvester based on RF and thermal energy: Design, testing, and IoT application. Energy Science & Engineering. doi:10.1002/ese3.784Sponsors
The research reported in this publication was supported by the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). The authors acknowledge the KAUST Sensor Initiative, under award OSR-2015-Sensors-2700, for the financial support. Special thanks go to Esraa Fakeih, who helped in collecting power measurement data on the KAUST campus.Publisher
WileyJournal
Energy Science & EngineeringDOI
10.1002/ese3.784Additional Links
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ese3.784https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirect/10.1002/ese3.784
ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1002/ese3.784
Scopus Count
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