Low-cost, wideband electromagnetic vibration energy harvesters for powering 'Internet of Things' (EMPOWER)

Project Description

Ambient mechanical vibrations have emerged as a viable energy source for low-power wireless sensor nodes aiming the fast growing era of the 'Internet of Things'. The project aims to exploit the demonstrated and patented novel bandwidth widening scheme using a nonlinear combined bistable-quartic potential system in a low-cost vibrational energy harvester which pushes the limit of the existing wideband techniques. To strengthen the performance further fundamentally, the project also proposes a novel electrical switching method (which was already demonstrated in a single potential nonlinear electromagnetic vibrational energy harvester system in meso scale) along with a self-activation circuit to be able to surf the high energy output branch continuously of the nonlinear oscillator involved. A back-end complete power management circuit (including ac-dc rectification) will be developed using off-the-shelf ultra-low power management module (e.g. ADI 5901/5902) together with the low frequency, high performance meso-scale energy harvester to develop a complete autonomous sensor node. To further miniaturize the proposed technology and to challenge the limits of current state-of-the-art, low/ultra-low frequency mechanical structures will be developed in a low cost manufacturing method to investigate the MEMS (microelectromechanical systems) scale solutions.