Stephen Beeby obtained his Ph. D. in micromechanical resonators from the Univer­sity of Southampton, U. K., in 1998. He was awarded a prestigious EPSRC advanced research fellowship in 2001 and is currently a reader in the School of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton. His research interests in­clude energy harvesting, MEMS, active […]

Neil White and Stephen Beeby School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, Southampton, United Kingdom This book has presented an overview of the design and implementation of autono­mous systems that are powered using ambient forms of energy within the operating environment. The availability, over recent years, of low-cost and low-power radio frequency devices […]

For the demonstration the two remote nodes (RN1 and RN2) are set up with differ­ing message priority levels, with RN1 having a message priority of MP2 and RN2 Figure 8.10 Energy-aware, energy-harvesting node components. (1: core node, 2: energy mul­tiplexer subsystem, 3: supercapacitor energy store, 4: thermal energy harvester, 5: wind energy harvester, 6: solar […]

As it was required to be able to control the quantity of energy available to the energy harvesters during the demonstration, controllable energy sources were pro­vided for each of the four energy harvester types being utilized. The energy sources used are as follows: • Solar energy harvester: For this module the ambient illumination was used, […]

To demonstrate the energy-aware, energy-harvesting node that has been described here, it has been used with supporting hardware to facilitate data flow and also to provide energy sources for the energy harvesters to utilize. 8.6.1 Supporting Nodes for Demonstration In the demonstration previously outlined, the energy-harvesting node communi­cates with two remote nodes and a sink […]

The energy-harvesting node relays information to the sink node in the form of set message types. Messages are sent using the RF link to the sink node containing the following information: • Sensor readings from the sensor modules attached to the energy-harvesting node and to the remote nodes: The sensor messages contain the source of […]

Within the intelligent energy management process there are several techniques to be used in conjunction to optimize the life of the node and its availability with the final goal being an energy-neutral operation. The first process used is to monitor the availability of energy from the different energy sources and the quantity of en­ergy available […]

8.5.1 Node Software The software used within the node also needs to be written with energy conserva­tion in mind, both in the overall operations being performed and also in the code Figure 8.8 Demonstration network topology. implementation. A key strategy used to operate the node in an energy-neutral man­ner is to track the level of […]