ABSTRACT
Energy harvesting is a technique which harvests or scavenges unused ambient energy and converts the harvested energy into electrical energy. In wireless sensor networks (WSNs), energy harvesting from any sources near to sensor nodes such as electric fields, magnetic fields, solar, thermal, air flow, and vibrations can be utilized to charge the batteries or to operate without using the batteries. Industrial applications of WSNs can be mainly categorized into two broad classes, wireless monitoring applications and wireless control applications. Though these two application classes exhibit different characteristics, common challenges for wireless sensor networks for industrial applications are: limited bandwidth, latency, coverage of the network, power, environmental conditions, robustness, and cost. Harvesting solar energy is ideal for outdoor WSN deployments due to the omnipresent nature of sun light. Solar energy harvesting is achieved by solar panels which capture the sun’s energy using photovoltaic cells. Thermal energy harvesting offers harvesting energy through heat transfer.
