Investigation to the Use of Vibration Energy for Supply of Hearing Aids

Using ambient energy, the operation time of batteries in mobile applications can be increased and the acceptability by the user can be improved. In this paper we investigate the possibilities to design hearing aids as power aware system scavenging energy directly from its environment. The energy source we consider is vibration produced by movements primarily in the neighbourhood of the ear and other movements of the human body. Experimental measurements of vibration were evaluated by means of a theoretical model. The results show that an interesting improvement of battery operation time can be reached.