Powering Wireless Sensor Nodes using Ambient RF Energy

Author

Bhalerao, Shantanu A. ; Chaudhary, Abhishek V. ; Deshmukh, Raghavendra B. ; Patrikar, Rajendra M.

Author_Institution

Visvesvaraya Nat. Inst. of Technol., Nagpur

Volume

4

fYear

2006

fDate

8-11 Oct. 2006

Firstpage

2695

Lastpage

2700

Abstract

Wireless sensor networks are being deployed in various scenarios for environment monitoring. Sensor nodes operating on batteries have fixed lifetime. Various means of energy scavenging are being explored to achieve an autonomous, self-powered sensor node. In this paper, we propose a system for conversion of ambient RF energy to electrical energy that can be used to power the sensor nodes. The system consists of a 4times4 antenna array followed by a diode detector section, a DC combining section and power control and management module. We discuss in detail the overall architecture of the system, the design of the diode detector and the design of folded patch antenna using full wave EM simulator. The output DC voltages for various values of incident RF power are presented.

Keywords

direct energy conversion; microstrip antenna arrays; power control; wireless sensor networks; ambient RF energy; antenna array; diode detector section; energy conversion; folded patch antenna; full wave EM simulator; power control-management module; self-powered sensor node; wireless sensor network; Antenna arrays; Batteries; Energy management; Envelope detectors; Monitoring; Power control; Radio frequency; Sensor arrays; Sensor systems; Wireless sensor networks; Wireless sensor network; energy scavenging; patch antenna design; power supply;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Systems, Man and Cybernetics, 2006. SMC '06. IEEE International Conference on

Conference_Location

Taipei

Print_ISBN

1-4244-0099-6

Electronic_ISBN

1-4244-0100-3

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ICSMC.2006.385281

Filename

4274288