Design considerations for solar energy harvesting wireless embedded systems

Abstract— Sustainable operation of battery powered wireless embedded systems (such as sensor nodes) is a key challenge, and considerable research effort has been devoted to energy optimization of such systems. Environmental energy harvesting, in particular solar based, has emerged as a viable technique to supplement battery supplies. However, designing an efficient solar harvesting system to realize the potential benefits of energy harvesting requires an in-depth understanding of several factors. For example, solar energy supply is highly time varying and may not always be sufficient to power the embedded system. Harvesting components, such as solar panels, and energy storage elements, such as batteries or ultracapacitors, have different voltage-current characteristics, which must be matched to each other as well as the energy requirements of the system to maximize harvesting efficiency. Further, battery nonidealities, such as self-discharge and round trip efficiency, directly a...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: IPSN
• Authors: Vijay Raghunathan, Aman Kansal, Jason Hsu, Jonathan Friedman, Mani B. Srivastava
• Keywords: Embedded System, Energy Harvesting, IPSN 2005, Sensor Networks, Solar Energy