1 Design and Experimentation of a Wireless Sensor Network Node Powered by Vibration Energy

Abstract—The limitation of wireless sensor networks (WSN) that operate by harvesting ambient energy is the scarcity of electrical energy generated to run embedded applications over the woken period. The novelty using the power source as a sensor of a wireless sensor node reduces energy consumption and provides a low cost solution for the application of detecting vibrations. While harvesting the mechanical energy from the tremor event, the wireless sensor node uses the energy harvesting behavior to be interpreted into vibration measurements, thus we have a simple and yet elegant design. In order to prove this design concept, a prototype was built in order to demonstrate the energy harvesting and sensing ability and to measure the performance of the prototype in terms of power utilisation and packet transmission rate