Design of Autonomous Micro-Solar Powered Energy Harvesting System for Self-Powered Batteries-less Wireless Sensor Mote

AbstractHarvesting electrical power from environment energy sources is an attractive and increasingly feasible option forseveral batteries-less micro-scale electronic systems such as biomedical implants and wireless sensor nodes thatneed to operate autonomously for long periods of time without needed batteries replacement and maintenance.However, designing highly efficient micro-scale energy harvesting systems requires an in-depth understanding ofvarious design considerations and tradeoffs. This paper reports and describes method of power management circuitdesign and implementation for micro-scale solar energy harvesting that based-on step-up voltage conversion,DC-DC boost converter with maximum peak power controllable and minimum 300mV start-up input voltage. Amicro-solar powered energy harvesting and power management system introduced for targeting to autonomouswireless sensor node (AW SN) application for monitoring purpose such as remote patient monitoring, structuralmonitoring and precision agriculture monitoring. In order to enhance efficiency of supply power to a microcontrollerunit (MCU) and a radio frequency (RF) module in a battery-less sensor network device without batterypower, our current prototype system utilizes combination of a super-capacitor with miniaturize flexible photovoltaiccells. Based on the consideration of practical application, we designed a communication mechanism for thebattery-less wireless sensor mote network system and discuss the various challenges and considerations involvedfrom a system-design perspective.4 halama