Piezo-Electric Energy Harvesting for Wireless Sensor Networks

Numerous industrial and military applications require remote sensing of various machine and equipment operating parameters in locations where traditional power sources may not be available and long periods of unattended operation are required. Quite often, however, some source of vibrating energy may be present in operation of the machine in question. Herein, a piezoelectric source is efficiently utilized to generate power for the operation of a microcontroller and radio transmitter to acquire sampled machine data. Various techniques for the efficient conversion, use, and storage of piezoelectric power are detailed and used in a general energy harvesting data transmitter design.