Energy harvesting technologies: Energy sources, generators and management for wireless autonomous applications

Microenergy harvesting technologies have seen strong growth over the last several years. Many different generator concepts have been developed, converting a wide variety of physical energy sources into useable electrical energy. By integrating sensor modules and a wireless transmitter along with the generators, a high order of flexibility and mobility is obtained with these systems, enabling many new applications: These energy-autonomous embedded systems have been proposed to be very useful for applications in logistics for tracking purposes, environmental monitoring, remote sensing applications, structural health monitoring, and also in the automotive sector for, e.g. tire pressure monitoring. Direct glucose fuel cells on the other hand have shown a possible way of generating electrical energy inside the human body for sensing applications, as well as a future energy supply for a pacemaker. This article will give a brief overview of research on energy harvesting generators. A wireless autonomous systems and its application will be presented along with details on the energy management.