Survey of Energy Harvesting Technologies for Wireless Sensor Networks

Energy harvesting (EH) technologies could lead to self-sustaining wireless sensor networks (WSNs) which are set to be a key technology in Industry 4.0. There are numerous methods for small-scale EH but these methods differ greatly in their environmental applicability, energy conversion characteristi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE access 2021, Vol.9, p.77493-77510
Main Authors: Williams, Alexander J., Torquato, Matheus F., Cameron, Ian M., Fahmy, Ashraf A., Sienz, Johann
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Combinatorial analysis
Electromagnetics
Energy conversion
Energy harvesting
Energy storage
Frequency conversion
Generators
Industrial applications
industry 4.0
Optimization
Small scale technology
Sustainable development
Temperature distribution
Vibrations
Wireless networks
Wireless sensor networks
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Summary:Energy harvesting (EH) technologies could lead to self-sustaining wireless sensor networks (WSNs) which are set to be a key technology in Industry 4.0. There are numerous methods for small-scale EH but these methods differ greatly in their environmental applicability, energy conversion characteristics, and physical form which makes choosing a suitable EH method for a particular WSN application challenging due to the specific application-dependency. Furthermore, the choice of EH technology is intrinsically linked to non-trivial decisions on energy storage technologies and combinatorial architectures for a given WSN application. In this paper we survey the current state of EH technology for small-scale WSNs in terms of EH methods, energy storage technologies, and EH system architectures for combining methods and storage including multi-source and multi-storage architectures, as well as highlighting a number of other optimisation considerations. This work is intended to provide an introduction to EH technologies in terms of their general working principle, application potential, and other implementation considerations with the aim of accelerating the development of sustainable WSN applications in industry.
ISSN:2169-3536
2169-3536
DOI:10.1109/ACCESS.2021.3083697