Communications of the ACM
Breakthrough in Powering Wireless Sensors
Australian National University researchers working to harvest ambient energy from mobile phone base stations to power wireless sensors.
Credit: Stuart Hay/Australian National University
Australian National University (ANU) researchers are making progress toward harvesting renewable or ambient energy from mobile phone base stations to power wireless sensors used in a range of industries.
The researchers were able to accurately model how much energy it takes to sense and transfer information by wireless sensors, and they are working on further ways to analyze the problem.
"A major problem hindering the widespread deployment of wireless sensor networks is the need to periodically replace batteries," says ANU professor Salman Durrani.
The researchers found it was feasible to replace batteries with energy harvested from solar or ambient radio frequency sources such as communication towers or other mobile phone base stations, with communication delays limited to less than a few hundred milliseconds.
"If we can use energy harvesting to solve the battery replacement problem for wireless sensors, we can implement long-lasting monitoring devices for health, agriculture, mining, wildlife, and critical national infrastructure, which will improve the quality of life," Durrani says.
From Australian National University
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