Energy Harvesting from Motion for Wireless Electronics
Eric M. Yeatman, Department of Electrical & Electronic Engineering, Imperial College London
Energy harvesting – the collection of otherwise unexploited energy in the local environment – is attracting increasing attention for the powering of electronic devices. While the power levels that can be reached are typically modest (microwatts to milliwatts), the key motivation is to avoid the need for battery replacement or recharging in portable or inaccessible devices. Wireless sensor networks are a particularly important application: the availability of essentially maintenance free sensor nodes, as enabled by energy harvesting, will greatly increase the feasibility of large scale networks, in the paradigm often known as pervasive sensing. Such pervasive sensing networks, used to monitor buildings, structures, outdoor environments or the human body, offer significant benefits for large scale energy efficiency, health and safety, and many other areas. Ambient motion is a key source of energy for harvesting, and a wide range of motion-powered energy harvesters have been proposed or demonstrated, particularly at the micro-scale. This talk will review the principles and state-of-art in miniature energy harvesters, with an emphasis on motion-driven devices, and discuss trends, suitable applications, and possible future developments.
Eric M. Yeatman completed his B.Eng in Engineering Physics at Dalhousie University, Canada, in 1985, and his PhD in Electrical Engineering at Imperial College London in 1989. Since then he has been a member of academic staff in the College’s Electrical and Electronic Engineering Department, where he is now Professor of Microengineering and deputy head of department. He was co-founder of the MEMS research activity at Imperial, now the biggest such activity in the UK, and has published over 160 papers and 7 patents, with frequently cited work in surface plasmon microscopy, integrated optics on silicon, and MEMS energy harvesting. He is Chairman and co-founder of Microsaic Systems plc, which develops sensing instruments based on silicon micro-engineering. He is a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology and of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining, and was awarded the Royal Academy of Engineering Silver Medal in 2011.