Energy harvesting generators are attractive as inexhaustible replacements for batteries in low-power wireless electronic devices and have received increasing research interest in recent years. Ambient motion is one of the main sources of energy for harvesting, and a wide range of motion-powered energy harvesters have been proposed or demonstrated, particularly at the microscale. This paper reviews the principles and state-of-art in motion-driven miniature energy harvesters and discusses trends, suitable applications, and possible future developments.

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Energy Harvesting From Human and Machine Motion for Wireless Electronic Devices

Today, the manufacturing industry is aiming to improve competitiveness through the convergence with cutting-edge ICT technologies in order to secure a new growth engine. Smart Manufacturing, which is the fourth revolution in the manufacturing industry and is also considered as a new paradigm, is the collection of cutting-edge technologies that support effective and accurate engineering decision-making in real time through the introduction of various ICT technologies and the convergence with the existing manufacturing technologies. This paper surveyed and analyzed various articles related to Smart Manufacturing, identified the past and present levels, and predicted the future. For these purposes, 1) the major key technologies related to Smart Manufacturing were identified through the analysis of the policies and technology roadmaps of Germany, the U.S., and Korea that have government-driven leading movements for Smart Manufacturing, 2) the related articles on the overall Smart Manufacturing concept, the key system structure, or each key technology were investigated, and, finally, 3) the Smart Manufacturing-related trends were identified and the future was predicted by conducting various analyses on the application areas and technology development levels that have been addressed in each article.

Smart manufacturing: Past research, present findings, and future directions

Recently, Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have attracted lot of attention due to their pervasive nature and their wide deployment in Internet of Things, Cyber Physical Systems, and other emerging areas. The limited energy associated with WSNs is a major bottleneck of WSN technologies. To overcome this major limitation, the design and development of efficient and high performance energy harvesting systems for WSN environments are being explored. We present a comprehensive taxonomy of the various energy harvesting sources that can be used by WSNs. We also discuss various recently proposed energy prediction models that have the potential to maximize the energy harvested in WSNs. Finally, we identify some of the challenges that still need to be addressed to develop cost-effective, efficient, and reliable energy harvesting systems for the WSN environment.

Energy harvesting in wireless sensor networks: A comprehensive review

Fortune favors the prepared: How SMEs approach business model innovations in Industry 4.0

The last two decades have witnessed several advances in microfabrication technologies and electronics, leading to the development of small, low-power devices for wireless sensing, data transmission, actuation, and medical implants. Unfortunately, the actual implementation of such devices in their respective environment has been hindered by the lack of scalable energy sources that are necessary to power and maintain them. Batteries, which remain the most commonly used power sources, have not kept pace with the demands of these devices, especially in terms of energy density. In light of this challenge, the concept of vibratory energy harvesting has flourished in recent years as a possible alternative to provide a continuous power supply. While linear vibratory energy harvesters have received the majority of the literature’s attention, a significant body of the current research activity is focused on the concept of purposeful inclusion of nonlinearities for broadband transduction. When compared to their linear resonant counterparts, nonlinear energy harvesters have a wider steady-state frequency bandwidth, leading to a common belief that they can be utilized to improve performance in ambient environments. Through a review of the open literature, this paper highlights the role of nonlinearities in the transduction of energy harvesters under different types of excitations and investigates the conditions, in terms of excitation nature and potential shape, under which such nonlinearities can be beneficial for energy harvesting. [DOI: 10.1115/1.4026278]

On the Role of Nonlinearities in Vibratory Energy Harvesting: A Critical Review and Discussion

A multifrequency mechanoelectrical piezoelectric converter intended for powering autonomous sensors from background vibrations is presented. The converter is composed of multiple bimorph cantilevers with different natural frequencies, whose rectified outputs are fed to a single storage capacitor. The structure of the converter, description of the operation, and measurement data on the performances are reported. Experimental results show the possibility of using the converter with input vibrations across a wideband frequency spectrum, improving the effectiveness of the overall energy conversion over the case of a single converter. The converter was used to supply power to a battery-less sensor module that intermittently reads the signal from a passive sensor and sends the measurement information via RF transmission, in this way forming an autonomous sensor system with improved measure-and-transmit rate.

Piezoelectric multifrequency energy converter for power harvesting in autonomous microsystems

Distributed architectures for industrial applications are a new opportunity to realize cost-effective, flexible, scalable and reliable systems. Direct interfacing of sensors and actuators to the industrial communication network improves the system performance, because process data and diagnostics can be simultaneously available to many systems and also shared on the Web. However, sensors, especially low-cost ones, cannot use standard communication protocols suitable for computers and PLCs. In fact, sensors typically require a cyclic, isochronous and hard real-time exchange of few data, whereas PCs and PLCs exchange a large amount of data with soft real-time constrains. Looking at the industrial communication systems, this separation is clearly visible: several fieldbuses have been designed for specific sensor application areas, whereas high-level industrial equipments use wired/wireless Ethernet and Internet technologies. Recently, traditional fieldbuses were replaced by Real-Time Ethernet protocols, which are ''extended'' versions of Ethernet that meet real-time operation requirements. Besides, real-time wireless sensor networking seems promising, as demonstrated by the growing research activities. In this paper, an overview of the state-of-art of real-time sensor networks for industrial applications is presented. Particular attention has been paid to the description of methods and instrumentation for performance measurement in this kind of architectures.

Wired and wireless sensor networks for industrial applications

The characterization of three commercial thermoelectric modules, which are designed for cooling/heating applications, is presented to employ the devices for power conversion, i.e., as thermoelectric generators (TEGs). The thermoelectric theory is briefly summarized at first, taking into account the relationship between the effective temperature difference across the TEG junctions and the temperature difference applied externally, considering insulating ceramic plates having finite thermal conductance. The thermoelectric modules have been characterized in terms of open-circuit output voltage and output power density for different temperature gradients and load conditions. Measurement techniques and experimental data are reported, which show the possibility of using thermoelectric devices for energy-harvesting applications. A comparison of the results from the tested devices with the performance data of commercial TEGs that are specifically designed for power harvesting is then presented, and the main characteristics of the two device typologies are discussed. A TEG was then used to supply an autonomous system that interfaces with a temperature sensor and periodically transmits the measurement information via an RF link. Experimental data show that the system works correctly and sends the RF signal when the temperature difference that is applied across the TEG is higher than 34 K.

Characterization of Thermoelectric Modules for Powering Autonomous Sensors

This paper presents a low-cost interface for high-value resistive sensors varying over a wide range, from k/spl Omega/ to G/spl Omega/. The proposed circuit that acts as a "resistance to period converter" is suitable to be interfaced to a microcontroller or a counting device. The behavior of real electronic components that produce estimation errors, is taken into account. Experimental results obtained by the realized prototype show a good resolution and repeatability.

A low-cost interface to high-value resistive sensors varying over a wide range

This paper deals with the energy conversion via the piezoelectric effect. A mechanoelectrical energy converter based on piezoelectric thick films of lead zirconate titanate (PZT) de- posited on a steel cantilever by a low-temperature process is pre- sented. Modeling and measurement results on the performances of the piezoelectric converter are reported, and its potential use in self-powered autonomous sensor devices is proposed. Index Terms—Autonomous microsystems, autonomous sensors, lead zirconate titanate (PZT), piezoelectric converter, power generation.

Daniele Marioli

Papers

Piezoelectric multifrequency energy converter for power harvesting in autonomous microsystems

Wired and wireless sensor networks for industrial applications

Characterization of Thermoelectric Modules for Powering Autonomous Sensors

A low-cost interface to high-value resistive sensors varying over a wide range

Modeling, Fabrication and Performance Measurements of a Piezoelectric Energy Converter for Power Harvesting in