Energy Scavenging for Wireless Sensor Networks With Special Focus on Vibrations

The vast reduction in size and power consumption of CMOScircuitry has led to a large research effort based around the visionof ubiquitous networks of wireless communication nodes. The wirelessdevices are usually designed to run on batteries. However, as thenetworks increase in number and the devices decrease in size, thereplacement of depleted batteries is not practical. Furthermore, abattery that is large enough to last the lifetime of the device woulddominate the overall system size, and thus is not very attractive.There is clearly a need to explore alternative methods of poweringthese small communication nodes. This book, therefore, focuses onpotential "ambient" sources of power that can be scavenged orharvested and subsequently used to run low power electronics andwireless transceivers.A wide range of potential power sources are briefly explored. Based ona comparison of these many potential sources, commonly occurringvibrations was chosen as an attractive, and little explored, powersource. Models for different types of power converters using bothelectrostatic and piezoelectric conversion mechanisms have beendeveloped. The models have been validated by testing prototypes drivenat vibrations similar to those found in many industrial and commercialbuilding environments. Finally, integration of a piezoelectricgenerator, power circuit, and custom design radio transceiver isdemonstrated.Power sources are becoming a bottleneck to the widespread deploymentof wireless sensor networks. This work reviews many potentialalternative sources of ambient power that can be scavenged. Vibrationto electricity converters are explored in great detail, and based onstudies and experiments, are shown to bean attractive power source inmany applications."Energy Scavenging for Wireless Sensor Networks with Special Focuson" "Vibrations" will be of interest to researchers andprofessionals in the areas of wireless electronics, smar