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Energy harvesting, wireless sensor networks & opportunities for industrial applications
Sebastien Boisseau and Ghislain Despesse, CEA-Leti 2/27/2012 8:45 AM EST
What can we do with less than a 100W-source? With the will to increase the number of sensors around us and to respect several economic and environmental constraints, researchers and R&D engineers are looking for new green and unlimited energy sources that will allow to remove batteries or wires and to develop autonomous wireless sensor networks with theoretical unlimited lifetimes. These new sources are based on ambient energy. Unfortunately, ambient energy is not very powerful -100W/cm is a good order of magnitude for energy harvesters- but is enough for many applications and especially in industry. From thousand to million sensors in our environment More and more sensors, this is a general will to increase the amount of information collected from equipment, buildings, environments allowing us to interact with our surroundings, to predict failures or to better understand some phenomena. Many fields are concerned: automotive, aerospace, industry, habitat. Some examples of sensors and fields are presented in figure 1.

Figure 1: Million sensors in our surroundings We have chosen to focus our study on industry, which is one of the most economically attractive areas. In order to reduce machine downtimes, costs of maintenance and costs of broken parts replacements, more and more industrialists are interested in developing (wireless) sensor networks able to collect many information (pressures, vibrations, temperatures) from their equipment to implement predictive maintenance. Unfortunately, it is difficult to deploy many more sensors with todays solutions, for two main reasons: 1- Cables are becoming difficult and costly to be drawn (inside walls, on rotating parts) 2- Battery replacements in wireless sensor networks are a burden that may cost a lot in large factories (hundred or thousand sensor nodes).

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As a consequence, industrialists, engineers and researchers are looking for developing autonomous wireless sensor networks able to work for years without any human intervention. One way to proceed consists in using a green and theoretically unlimited source: ambient energy. Ambient sources Four main ambient energy sources are present in our environment: mechanical energy (vibrations, deformations), thermal energy (temperature gradients or variations), radiant energy (sun, infrared, RF) and chemical energy (chemistry, biochemistry). These sources are characterized by different power densities (figure 2). Energy Harvesting (EH) from outside sun appears to be the most powerful (even if values given in figure 2 have to be weighted by conversion efficiencies that rarely exceed 20 percent in photovoltaic cells). Unfortunately, solar energy harvesting is not possible in dark areas (near machines, in warehouses). Similarly, it is not possible to harvest energy from thermal gradients when there is no thermal gradient or to harvest vibrations when there is no vibration. As a consequence, the source of ambient energy must be chosen according to the local environment of the WSN node: no universal ambient energy source exists.

Figure 2: Ambient sources power densities before conversion Figure 2 also shows that 10-100W is a good order of magnitude for 1cm or 1cm-EH output power. Obviously, 10-100W is not a great amount of power; yet it can be enough for many applications and especially Wireless Sensor Networks. Autonomous wireless sensor networks (aWSN) & needs A simple vision of aWSN nodes is presented in figure 3a. Actually, aWSN nodes can be represented as 4 boxes devices: (i) sensors box, (ii) microcontroller (C) box, (iii) radio box and (iv) power box. To power this device by EH, it is necessary to adopt a global system vision aimed at reducing power consumption of sensors, C and radio. Actually, significant progress has already been accomplished by microcontrollers & RF chips manufacturers (Atmel, Microchip, Texas Instruments) both for working and standby modes. An example of a typical sensor nodes power consumption is given in figure 3b. 3 typical values can be highlighted: - 1-5W: standby modes power consumption - 500W-1mW: active modes power consumption - 50mW: transmission power peak

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Figure 3: (a) aWSN node and (b) sensor nodes power consumption First of all, this diagram gives a minimum EH output power more or less necessary to build viable EH-powered sensor nodes. This limit can be fixed to 1-5W that corresponds to a good order of magnitude for microprocessor and RF chips standby modes. Secondly, this diagram highlights the fact that todays EH devices cannot supply aWSN in a continuous active mode (500W-1mW power consumption vs 10-100W for EH output power). Fortunately, thanks to an ultra-low power consumption standby mode, EH-powered aWSN can be developed by adopting an intermittent operation mode as presented in figure 4. Energy is stored in a buffer (a) (capacitor, battery) and used to perform a measurement cycle as soon as enough energy is stored in the buffer (b & c). System then goes back to standby mode (d) waiting for a new measurement cycle.

Figure 4: WSN measurement cycle Therefore, it is possible to power any application thanks to EH, even the most consumptive one. The main problem is to adapt the measurement cycle frequency to the continuously harvested power. To illustrate possibilities given by EH for aWSN, one needs only to look at the link between power, energy and measurement cycle frequency. Power, Energy, Measurement cycle frequency Is an EH-based source viable? Sensor nodes average power consumption (P) corresponds to the total amount of energy needed for one measurement cycle (W) multiplied by the frequency of this action (f).

This simple link between P, W and f can be illustrated by figure 5. By using log-log scales, with energy in abscissa and measurement frequency in ordinate, average power consumption is represented by straight lines of slope -1. Obviously, power sources can also be represented in this diagram. It allows to compare limited sources (batteries, lithium, wood) and ambient energy sources (e.g. 100W green line). For example, harvesting 100W during 1 year corresponds to a total amount of energy equivalent to 1g of

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lithium. Moreover, by taking this approach of looking at energy consumption for one measure instead of an average power consumption, it appears that: 1- Sending 100bits of data consumes 5J 2- Measuring acceleration consumes 50J 3- Making a complete measure: measure+conversion+emission consumes 250-500J. Therefore, with 100W harvested continuously, it is possible to perform a complete measure every 1-10 seconds (0.1-1Hz). This is in agreement with many industrial needs and especially with predictive maintenance topics.

Figure 5: Power, Energy and Frequency PWf diagrams EH Technological offers and actors According to a study market performed by CEA-Leti, EH-powered aWSN is a field of growing interest. The technological offer is being improved and diversified. For the same reasons, the number of industrial actors increases. Figure 6 presents several industrial actors working on energy harvesting (except photovoltaics). Obviously, many research centers also work on EH (University Of Southampton (UK), MIT (USA), Peking University (CN), Holst Centre (D), Berkeley (US), INSA (FR), LETI (FR), Fraunhofer(D))

Figure 6: Industrial actors on EH (except photovoltaics) Unfortunately, except for PV cells, EH is still perceived by industrialists as a non-mature technology that requires much improvements before being really interesting and widely used. Nevertheless, its advantages

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compared to wires or batteries are already well perceived. Table 1 presents some industrialists visions of EH (CEA-Leti study market). We compare these results with standard solutions, i.e. batteries and wires.

Table 1: Industrialists visions of EH

Needs from industry Key success factors Actually, this market survey has raised the main reasons why EH is still not in agreement with industrialists needs. They are summarized in table 2. We also present EH main limits and propose some improvements, focusing on vibration energy harvesting (VEH) and thermoelectricity.

Table 2: Industrialists needs and EH limits Conclusion: Still an emerging technology but with great opportunities Even though many developments have taken place over the past 10 years, energy harvesting except for PV cells is still an emerging technology that has not yet been adopted by industry. Nevertheless, improvements of present technologies that are currently under investigation should enable to meet the needs expressed by industrialists. For vibration energy harvesters, the most important focal area of research is probably the increase of the working frequency bandwidth that is still a technological bottleneck preventing this technology from being a viable and versatile supply source. For thermoelectricity, improvements mainly concern materials to increase EH output power even on small thermal gradients. As for robustness and impacts of aging, only time will bring more information. To conclude, energy harvesting can be and will be a viable solution to develop autonomous wireless sensor networks. Its adequacy with sustainable development is a great opportunity. Obviously, photovoltaic cells are probably the most advanced and robust technology today, but it cannot work in all situations and especially for industry applications; thermoelectricity and vibration energy harvesting can be suitable for these environments. Nevertheless, both of them should be improved and prove their worth before it is fully adopted by industry.
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About the authors Sebastien Boisseau and Ghislain Despesse are researchers at CEA-Leti, a French institute focused on micro- and nanotechnologies and their applications. CEA-Leti is part of CEA, French Atomic Energy and Alternative Energies Commission. The authors would like to thank F. Pinaud and S. Joly for the market survey, and their VEH coworkers, B. Ahmed Seddik, J.J. Chaillout, A.B. Duret, P. Gasnier, P.D. Berger, S. Rich and S. Dauv for their contribution to this article. Visit CEA-Leti Follow us on SmartEnergy Designline

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