Energy Harvesting Powered Embedded Systems

TL;DR

This paper discusses energy harvesting techniques as sustainable power sources for embedded systems, overcoming battery limitations and enabling longer operation through RF, solar, piezoelectric, and thermal energy scavenging.

Contribution

It provides an overview of energy harvesting methods and highlights their potential to power embedded systems without batteries.

Findings

Energy harvesting can significantly extend device lifetime.

Various energy sources like RF, solar, and thermal are viable.

Energy harvesting enables sustainable and maintenance-free operation.

Abstract

Historically, battery is the power source for mobile, embedded and remote system applications. However, the development of battery techniques does not follow the Moore's Law. The large physical size, limited electric quantity and high-cost replacement process always restrict the performance of the application such as embedded systems, wireless sensors networks and lower-power electronics. Energy harvesting, a technique which enables the applications to scavenge energy from RF signal from TV towers, solar energy, piezoelectric driven by motion of people and thermal energy from the temperature difference, which could dramatically extend the operating lifetime of applications. Thus, energy harvesting is important for the sustainable operations of an application.