Energy harvesting for wireless sensor nodes in factory environments

Issues like production process optimization, monitoring of process parameters, flexibility or production efficiency play an important role for the development of factories or production and logistics facilities in the future. Wireless sensor systems organized in a superordinate network provide more suitable methods for the gathering of additional information in comparison to conventional wired sensor applications. Considering the special environmental conditions in factories a complete new design of wireless sensor systems has to be developed. By pooling competences of mechanical and electrical engineering and information and communication technology a platform was installed to develop wireless sensor solutions influenced from all mentioned research directions. Key elements for wireless sensor systems in production sites are suitable sensor solutions, a hybrid power supply and a robust communication. Within this contribution the structure of such a system and exemplary applications in industrial environments are shown.