Harvesting ambient energy from the environment has become an attractive possibility for nodes in wireless networks. In addition to being environmentally friendly, energy harvesting networks promise almost perpetual operation which has been a holy grail for autonomous networks such as wireless sensor networks, and more recently M2M. However, achieving these benefits requires rethinking communica...

Harvesting energy from the environment is essential for many applications to slow down the deterioration of energy of the devices in sensor networks and in general, the network itself. Energy from the environment is an inexhaustible supply which, if properly managed and harvested from the sources, can allow the system to last for a longer period – more than the expected lifetime at the time of ...

A unique method has been developed to scavenge energy from monocrystaline solar cells to power wireless router nodes used in indoor applications. The system’s energy harvesting module consists of solar cells connected in series-parallel combination to scavenge energy from 34W fluorescent lights. A set of ultracapacitors were used as the energy storage device. Two router nodes were used as a rou...

Vibration energy harvesting is an attractive technique for potential powering of wireless sensors and low power devices. While the technique can be employed to harvest energy from vibrations and vibrating structures, a general requirement independent of the energy transfer mechanism is that the vibration energy harvesting device operate in resonance at the excitation frequency. Most energy harv...

the most promising method for micro scale energy scavenging is via vibration energy harvesting which converts mechanical energy to electrical energy by the effect of coupling between electric fields and mechanical variables. using piezoelectric cantilevers is the most common method for vibration energy harvesting. changing the shape of the cantilevers can lead to changing the generated output v...

as a promising approach to enable self-sufficient and self-sustaining operation for devices in energy-constrained networks by scavenging energy from the ambient environment to power up devices. In particular, for wireless sensor networks, if the sensors, which spread throughout homes or factories, in buildings or even outdoors, are powered by energy harvesting, there are no batteries to replace...

In this paper, we study energy harvesting from the mouse click motions of a robot finger and a human index finger using a piezoelectric material. The feasibility of energy harvesting from mouse click motions is experimentally and theoretically assessed. The fingers wear a glove with a pocket for including the piezoelectric material. We model the energy harvesting system through the inverse kinemat...

In sustainable wireless sensor networks powered by ambient energy harvesting, node operation highly depends on the energy availability and harvesting rate. For them to support existing wireless sensor network applications, duty-cycling schemes need to adapt the nodes’ sleep-wake schedules according to energy harvesting and consumption rates. In this paper, we propose a harvesting-aware duty-cyc...

Piezoelectric vibration based energy harvesting systems have been widely utilized and researched as powering modules for various types of sensor systems due to their ease of integration and relatively high energy density compared to RF, thermal, and electrostatic based energy harvesting systems. In this paper, a low-power CMOS full-bridge rectifier is presented as a potential solution for an ef...