Power Harvesting for Shipboard Health Monitoring Sensors

This Phase II Navy SBIR proposal is aimed at the development of a new class of wireless sensing devices. These sensors do not require batteries or external magnetic fields in order to send data, instead, they rely on harvesting vibrational energy in order to sense information and to wirelessly transmit that information to a central host. MicroStain, Inc. produces a range of wireless sensing instruments, including microprocessor based, multichannel, programmable transmitters compatible with thermocouples, strain gauges, accelerometers, displacement sensors, and capacitive sensors. Prototype energy harvesting systems that employ piezoelectric materials have been built and tested. These wireless sensing systems use digital RF communications, node addressing, and time division multiple access to allow networks of sensing nodes to communicate to a central (web-enabled) receiver. Phase I included improvements in efficiency of the piezoelectric energy harvesting circuit, modifications to minimize power consumption, and development of mathematical models to facilitate piezoelectric energy harvesting from a straining structure and vibratory environment. In Phase II, improvements to the piezoelectric energy harvesting wireless sensor nodes and integration with Navy infrastructure for shipboard network communications are planned. The Phase II Option will demonstrate these energy harvesting wireless sensor networks on the Navy's machines and structures.