Analysis of Energy Harvesting Techniques for Wireless Sensor Networks Deployment Scenarios

Abstract

The exponential scaling of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) has a far-reaching impact on operational energy requirements. Naturally occurring or ambient environmental energy (e.g., light, radio frequency, vibration, wind, or thermal energy) can be utilized to improve the lifetime of WSNs. This paper attempts to provide an overview of energy harvesting sources available in a target operating environment and demonstrates power consumption system models of an application low-power embedded system-on-chip (SoC) platform capable of harvesting ambient energy and communicating wirelessly. The said node is responsible for harvesting several sources of energy to electricity and contains a power management module for processing and distributing the harvested power across the system and a low-power communications radio. The idea is to understand the end deployment environment through experimentation and study the energy harvesting methodology.