Hybrid Harvesting Energy for Wireless Sensor Networks

Currently, wireless sensors have been used in variety of applications such as surveillance, real-time data sharing, in-vivo medical devices, condition-based monitoring, etc. that can revolutionize industrial efficiency, health monitoring, and data processing. MEMS technology made possible autonomous wireless sensor nodes via the use of widespread, tiny sensors in large numbers. However, the sheer number of sensors requires a huge number of batteries, which can be very heavy, hard to deploy, and difficult to replace. Large geographic coverage of surveillance sensors requiring hundreds or thousands of batteries, with a limited life span and temperature tolerance, may not be practical, especially due to their maintenance and replacing the discharged batteries in hostile territories. Therefore, it is important to have a self-sufficient carefree power source that can generate electric power from its environment. Maximizing the use of wireless sensors will reduce the cost of maintenance and manpower. Using electric energy generated by environmental elements from disturbance/vibration or a temperature gradient in self-powered devices can eliminate sensor batteries in remote or inaccessible places. This proposal addresses that need via a novel approach to generate power from hybrid energy sources.