918
1, FEBRUARY 2019
Multisource Energy Harvesting System for a
Wireless Sensor Network Node in the
Field Environment
Fang Deng , Senior Member, IEEE, Xianghu Yue, Xinyu Fan, Shengpan Guan, Yue Xu,
and Jie Chen , Senior Member, IEEE
Abstract—This paper presents the design, implementation,
and characterization of a hardware platform applicable to a
self-powered wireless sensor network (WSN) node. Its primary
design objective is to devise a hybrid energy harvesting system
to extend the operational lifetime of WSN node after they
are deployed in the field environment. Besides the implemen-
tation of optimal components (microcontroller, sensor, radio
frequency (RF) transceiver, and others) to achieve the lowest
power consumption, it is also necessary to consider the sources of
energy instead of the frequent recharging or replacement of bat-
teries. Therefore, the platform incorporates a multisource energy
harvesting module to collect energy from the surrounding envi-
ronment, including wind, solar radiation, and thermal energy.
The platform also includes an energy storage module through a
super-capacitor, RF transceiver module, and the primary micro-
controller module. Experimental results showed that the WSN
node system with appropriate integration will reserve sufficient
energy and meet the long-term power supply requirements of
the WSN node without batteries in the field environment. The
experimental results and empirical measurements taken over nine
days demonstrated that the average daily generating capacity was
7805.09 J, which is far more than the energy consumption of the
WSN node (about 2972.88 J).
Index Terms—Hybrid energy harvesting, self-powered, solar
and thermal energy, wind, wireless sensor network (WSN).
I. I NTRODUCTION
IRELESS sensor networks (WSNs) are utilized in a
W wide range of applications, including military applica-
tions, healthcare applications, and the monitoring of oceans
and environments [1]. Using WSN, the physical world can
Manuscript received April 16, 2018; revised July 20, 2018; accepted
August 7, 2018. Date of publication August 14, 2018; date of current
version February 25, 2019. This work was supported in part by the
Beijing NOVA Program under Grant xx2016B027, in part by the Projects
of Major International (Regional) Joint Research Program NSFC under
Grant 61720106011, in part by the NSFC under Grant 61621063, and in part
by the Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Intelligent Robots and Systems
(Beijing Institute of Technology). (Corresponding author: Fang Deng.)
F. Deng and X. Yue are with the School of Mathematics and Statistics and
the Key Laboratory of Intelligent Control and Decision of Complex Systems,
School of Automation, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China
(e-mail: dengfang@bit.edu.cn; yuexianghubit@163.com).
X. Fan, S. Guan, Y. Xu, and J. Chen are with the Key Laboratory
of Intelligent Control and Decision of Complex Systems, School of
Automation, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China (e-mail:
fanzyzl@163.com; guanshengpan@126.com; simplezoe1213@163.com;
chenjie@bit.edu.cn).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JIOT.2018.2865431
2327-4662 c 2018 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
IEEE INTERNET OF THINGS JOURNAL, VOL. 6, NO.
be observed, and information related to the surroundings is
gathered [2], [3]. These applications have the purpose of moni-
toring and collecting data about a given phenomenon or event
from the environment. The lifespan and performance of the
wireless sensor node and communication circuits play a key
role in these applications of WSNs [4]. However, these factors
are largely limited by the batteries, which have finite energy
capacity to supply power to the WSN nodes for a long period
of time [5]. In particular, WSN nodes are commonly deployed
in human-hostile and harsh environments and are supposed
to work as long as possible, about several months, or even
longer. The disadvantage of traditional batteries, however, is
that they must be frequently recharged or replaced, which is a
heavy burden in WSN applications [6]. Furthermore, portable
energy sources like batteries will experience current leakages
that drain energy even when they are not being used. Besides,
due to long-term wear and tear, any flaws in the packaging
will result in environmental pollution [7]. In view of these
limitations, an auxiliary or even a completely distinct power
source should be equipped to the nodes in order to achieve
continuous monitoring and control. Hence, energy harvesting
methods [8]–[16] from the surrounding environment come into
prominence to alleviate the problems of energy-constrained
WSN by exploiting a stray source or converting energy from
one form to another [17], [18].
There are many kinds of energy forms in the field environ-
ments, in which the WSN nodes are deployed, such as solar
energy, wind energy, electromagnetic energy, wind energy, and
vibration energy. These different forms energy can be har-
vested to power WSN nodes to remove the dependence on
batteries. Kim et al. [19] used thermoelectric generator tech-
nology to convert a temperature difference into electric power
and designed the maximum power point tracking scheme
for a thermoelectric battery energy storage system, and [20]
proposed energy supply depends on an innovative thermoelec-
tric energy harvester, which takes advantage of the changes in
environmental temperature during takeoff and landing. In [21],
an energy harvesting scheme using wind energy to power
a remote area wind sensor was proposed. The wind sensor
was able to harvest wind energy from the ambient envi-
ronment to power its associated electronic circuitry, so that
the self-powered wind sensor would be fully autonomous.
Jiang et al. [22] and Raghunathan et al. [23] were proba-
bly the first to supply WSN nodes with a small PV module.
DENG et al.: MULTISOURCE ENERGY HARVESTING SYSTEM FOR WSN NODE IN FIELD ENVIRONMENT
Dondi et al. [24] modeled and optimized a solar energy har-
vester system for self-powered WSNs. As an alternative to
conventional energy harvesting techniques, there is another
technology called wireless power transfer, holding that wire-
less receivers can also harvest energy from radio frequency
signals [25]–[27]. However, in this paper, we only limits to
the natural resource energy harvesting techniques.
In some specific situations, WSN nodes could operate
continuously while harvesting energy from a single source;
however, availability of natural sources affects the durability
of their operation dramatically, thus it may not be effective in
terms of cost, reliability, and efficiency. To exemplify, solar
energy is extremely sensitive to the environment, i.e., it is
only exploitable during daytime and susceptible to weather
conditions [2]. As available techniques of energy harvesting
depend strongly on environmental conditions, hybrid energy
harvesting system that could harvest more than one energy
source becomes even more important for sustaining and sta-
ble power supply. Due to this reason, hybrid solutions possess
a great potential to extend the lifetime of wireless devices by
operating in a complementary manner [1].
In this paper, a platform of energy harvesting from three
readily available energy sources, i.e., solar, wind, and thermal
energy, was designed to overcome the shortcomings of single
source energy harvesting for the sake of extending the lifes-
pan of the WSN nodes and to make full use of the energy
from its surrounding environment. Multisource energy har-
vesters are proposed in [28] to power the future Internet of
Nano Things, since the network elements can maintain their
operation regardless of the fact that one of its energy sources
might be temporarily unavailable. Tan and Panda [4] proposed
a hybrid energy harvesting system of indoor ambient light
and thermal energy to enhance the performance of indoor
wireless sensor nodes. Magno et al. [29] designed a proto-
type hardware platform that harvested both solar and wind
energy; it achieved energy autonomy for continuous long-
term monitoring. However, these energy harvesting system
could not be easily and stably deployed in the field environ-
ment for WSN nodes, which needs better structural design,
low cost, and more power. Other hybrid energy harvesting
systems discussed in [30]–[32] could not harvest energy from
both energy sources simultaneously based on their power
management circuits. Thus, in this paper, a super-capacitor
was used, so that the system could harvest three kinds of
energy sources simultaneously and accumulate electric power.
Additionally, in order to reduce the power consumption of
the management circuit, the circuit was designed to be sim-
ple but still meet the requirements of the system. Besides,
to the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to
harvest three energy for WSN nodes, including solar, wind,
and thermal energy. Different energy harvester modules are
combined through a specific structure, making full use of
the limited space while promoting each other between these
modules so that the overall power generation of the system
are increased. A variety of power generation methods reduce
the impact of the weather factors on the normal operation of
WSN and improve the adaptability of the device to different
environments.
919
Fig. 1. Block architecture of the self-powered WSN node system.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section II
illustrates the design of the hybrid energy harvesting system
in detail. Section III describes the energy storage and man-
agement circuit. Following that, the experiments on the
whole WSN node system are described in Section IV.
Lastly, this paper ends with the conclusion and discussion in
Section V.
II. I NTEGRATED D ESIGN AND D ESCRIPTION OF THE
S ELF -P OWERED WSN N ODE S YSTEM
The self-powered WSN node incorporates the sensor and an
energy self-powered system, which implements the acquisition
and conversion of the energy in the environment, and thus
provides a stable and continuous power supply for the sensor.
To achieve such a system, besides needing a device to collect
the ubiquitous energy around it, a power storage module is
also required. This module stores the surplus electricity and
the corresponding control circuit for energy management and
control, and thus the system can provide stable power for the
sensor and realize the most efficient utilization of energy. The
application environment of a distributed intelligent WSN is
generally terrestrial, where the widely existing energies are
solar, thermal, and wind. Therefore, it is the best choice to
collect all three kinds of energy for our self-powered WSN
node system. Fig. 1 shows the block architecture of the self-
powered WSN node system.
The energy collection and conversion subsystem is the core
part of the energy supply, and is the “energy source” of the
entire node system. It collects solar, thermal, and wind energy
from the environment, and converts it into electric energy for
the sensor node. The design of this system should consider the
application requirements of the node system, combine with the
wireless node system reasonably, and meet the requirements
of miniaturization, portability, and stability. It should also con-
sider the complementary strengths of the three types of energy
in a reasonable way so as to increase energy utilization as
much as possible.
The energy storage subsystem can store surplus energy
when the energy supply is sufficient. However, because the
three kinds of energy supply methods have a certain unpre-
dictability, they cannot provide adequate power supply to the
920
TABLE I
D ESCRIPTION OF THE S ELF -P OWERED WSN N ODE S YSTEM
Fig. 2. Design chart of monolithic construction.
load at any time, sometimes there is weak power genera-
tion, even intermittent situation. Thus, it is necessary for the
wireless sensor node to have an energy storage subsystem
with an energy buffer. First, the intermittent and tiny energy
can be stored by the energy storage device, and then the
accumulated energy will be used for the load. We should
also consider the miniaturization and low power consumption
requirements of the wireless sensor node; this energy storage
module needs to be able to store energy easily without the
complex conversion circuitry losing more energy during the
conversion process. Through the cooperation of the energy
collection and conversion subsystem and the energy storage
subsystem, we can realize a continuous power supply for
the node.
After collection and conversion, solar and thermal energy
will be transformed into a unfixed direct current; the elec-
tric energy converted by the wind would have the largest
instability, perhaps even an alternating current. Since the
wireless sensor node needs a low voltage direct current of
about 3.3 V, the control circuit is required to transform and
store the output voltage from the three types of energy.
Moreover, it is essential to have a voltage stabilizing cir-
cuit when the energy storage subsystem supplies power to
the load. Therefore, for the whole self-powered system,the
design of the control circuit is very important to meet the
actual requirements of the node and the entire system’s normal
operation.
According to the principles above, we integrated a solar
power module, wind power module, and thermoelectric mod-
ule. We designed the overall structure of the self-powered
system to meet the miniaturization of a wireless device, and
thus it was convenient to deploy in the field environment. The
concrete structure is shown in Fig. 2.
IEEE INTERNET OF THINGS JOURNAL, VOL. 6, NO. 1, FEBRUARY 2019
III. D ESIGN OF THE M ULTIENERGY H ARVESTER
S UBSYSTEM AND E NERGY S TORAGE S UBSYSTEM
The energy self-powered system comprises of energy collec-
tion and conversion subsystem and energy storage subsystem.
The former subsystem include wind, solar and heat energy
harvester, it is also the core part of our whole system. As
the main contribution of this paper pertains to the multisource
energy harvester subsystem, this is the focal point of explana-
tion. The following section presents a detailed explanation of
the design methodology, component selection, and implemen-
tation. The super-capacitor is used in energy storage subsystem
to store and supply power for the wireless sensor node. The
whole description of the self-powered WSN node system is
presented in Table I.
A. Wind Harvester Subsystem
This subsystem collects wind energy through a vertical axis
turbine, but its efficiency is relatively low under weak wind
conditions. Therefore, if a wind collection method can be
used to accelerate the wind passing through the wind wheel
when the wind is weak, the power generation capacity can
be increased to a certain extent. Moreover, the wind can be
used for the heat dissipation of the thermoelectric generator;
the heat can be taken more quickly when the accelerated wind
passes through the surface of the radiator.
1) Duct Design: The wind collecting device as the main
structure was designed to be spherical, and its intermediate part
was designed to have multiple funnel shapes to collect wind
from all directions, as shown in Fig. 3. The cross-sectional area
of the funnel-shaped wind collecting channel was gradually
reduced so that it could increase the wind speed; the smaller
the cross-sectional area of the channel, the greater the wind
speed. According to the Bernoulli effect, the velocity of the
fluid is inversely proportional to the pressure [33]. The greater
the current velocity, the smaller the pressure. Therefore, the
fluid will form a low pressure near the high velocity flow,
resulting in an adsorption effect, and further adsorption of the
fluid to make the flow faster. Thus, there are small wind speed
and strong pressure at the air inlet of the channel, and large
wind speed and weak pressure at the air outlet; thus, the air
inlet is positioned at the low pressure area, and then the air is
adsorbed to collect more wind power.
DENG et al.: MULTISOURCE ENERGY HARVESTING SYSTEM FOR WSN NODE IN FIELD ENVIRONMENT
(a)
(b) (c)
Fig. 3. Duct design of the wind harvester subsystem. (a) Physical map of
the designed duct. (b) Cross-sectional view of the designed duct. (c) Sketch
map of wind collecting in the designed duct.
TABLE II
R ESULTS OF E XPERIMENTS ON THE W IND C OLLECTION S ECTION
Wind experiments were carried out on the wind collection
section; the results are shown in Table II. It can be seen from
the table that the device could accelerate the wind and had a
good wind collecting effect.
2) Fan Blade Design: The inside of the wind collecting
device is a vertical axis turbine. Vertical fan blades, such as
 type,  type, Y type, and H type can be used, depend-
ing on the average wind speed of the working environment
of the wireless sensor node system. The wind guiding wall
of the wind collecting device directs the natural wind to the
thrust point of the vertical fan blades. The wind of the fan
blades resistance point is small, thereby increasing the rota-
tional speed of the fan under the same working condition and
improving the power generation of the wind harvesting system.
Compared with a horizontal axis wind turbine, the vertical
one has low noise and little effect on WSN nodes. The verti-
cal fan blades are connected with small generators directly,
without adjusting the windward surface, thus, reducing the
mechanical loss of the steer device and making full use of the
limited space. It does not only have the advantages of a sim-
ple mechanical structure, low manufacturing cost, and strong
and durable performance. It also meets the requirements of
the random throwing arrangement of the wireless sensor node
device, and enhances the survivability of the device in harsh
environments.
The power of a wind turbine P [34] is
1 1 π in serial and parallel outdoor. Since even on sunny days solar
P= Cp ρSV 3 = Cp ρ D2 V 3 = 0.49Cp V 3 D2
2 2 4
921
Fig. 4. Vertical axis wind turbine design of the wind harvester subsystem.
Fig. 5. Experimental results of solar cells in different connections.
where ρ is the air density, generally taking the standard atmo-
spheric pressure, V is the wind speed, D is the rotor diameter,
and Cp is the wind energy utilization coefficient.
According to Baez theory, the maximum of Cp is 0.593, and
the actual wind power generator usually takes 0.35; thus, the
power can be calculated by (1). When the rotor diameter is
about 5 cm, the generating power is 200 mW, which meets the
instantaneous electric energy demand of the sensor node, and
therefore the power generation method can be used to realize
the miniaturization. However, the efficiency of the vertical axis
wind turbine is much lower than that of the horizontal axis
wind turbine. Thus, the designed wind wheel size was 10 cm
× 10 cm, and was placed in the center of the wind collecting
device, as shown in Fig. 4.
B. Solar Harvester Subsystem
This subsystem collects solar energy through solar cells. We
used flexible solar cells so that they could match the sphere
structure of the sensor node and be part of the sphere.
Some experiments were conducted to find the optimum
combination state. In sunny weather the light intensity reaches
1200 W/m2 , and five solar cells were, respectively, connected
(1) cells may be sheltered by objects or back to the sun when the
922
Fig. 6. Experimental results of solar cells in different connections and under
shade.
solar cell works, the system should also be tested under the
shaded condition.
From the above experimental results in Fig. 5, we could con-
clude that how the cells were connected did not have much
impact on the power generation when there is no shadow,
however, under shade, the power efficiency in series reduced
rapidly in Fig. 6. Due to the wild environment and the spher-
ical structure of the node system, there will inevitably be
shadows, and thus taking multiple solar cells in parallel is
the most reasonable and effective design.
C. Heat Harvester Subsystem
This subsystem collects thermal energy through the ther-
moelectric generator, and it has two sides: one side is the
hot end, connecting the heat source to collect heat energy;
and the other side is the cold end, connecting the radiator for
heat dissipation. Between the two sides is a power generation
unit combined with many pairs of PN semiconductor power
generation materials in series. The heat energy flows continu-
ously from the hot end through the generation unit and then
releases at the cold end when the thermoelectric generator
collects heat energy to generate electricity [35]. Theoretically,
electricity can be generated as long as there is a temperature
difference between the two ends. However, in the experiments,
if the hot end is directly attached to the heat source and the
cold end takes no heat dissipation measures, the temperature
at the cold end will rise rapidly and is almost the same as that
at the hot end. This is because both the PN material and the
ceramic material on the two sides of the thermoelectric gener-
ator are highly thermally conductive. So that the temperature
difference between the two sides no longer exists, making the
thermoelectric generator lose effect, and no power is output.
Therefore, the key to this design’s practical application is to
ensure the temperature difference between the hot end and the
cold end (e.g., the hot end maintains a high temperature and
the cold end maintains a low temperature). This is a technical
difficulty in particular applications.
1) Hot End Design: In the field environment without
interference, the only heat source is the solar radiation. It is
low-grade heat energy, and has low energy flux density, and
thus we must adopt some technology to collect solar radi-
ation and increase the temperature at the hot end as much
IEEE INTERNET OF THINGS JOURNAL, VOL. 6, NO. 1, FEBRUARY 2019
Fig. 7. Physical map and thermography of plate A.
Fig. 8. Physical map and thermography of plate B.
as possible. We designed a solar radiation absorption device, a
solar collector heat plate. The energy of solar radiation mainly
exists in the spectral wavelength of 0.3 and 3 μm. There is a
large difference for the object in the monochromatic absorption
of long and short waves, and the object itself also radiates heat
constantly to its surroundings [36]. Therefore, the monochro-
matic absorption rate of the wavelength between 0.3 and 3 μm
should be as close to 1 as possible, while the wave monochro-
matic absorption rate of the wavelength of more than 3 μm
should be as close as to 0 possible, making the hot side absorb
as much solar radiation heat as possible, while its own radiate
heat is small enough to ensure that the hot end maintains a
relatively high temperature.
We achieved this goal by applying a coating that selectively
absorbs solar energy on the surface of the solar collector heat
plate, and it makes the monochromatic absorption rate of the
wavelength between 0.3 and 3 μm reach about 0.9. This spe-
cial selective coating features excellent solar heat absorption
and minimal heat reflection properties.
In order to verify the effect of the coating on solar radia-
tion, four identical aluminum alloy heat collecting plates were
labeled A, B, C, and D. Plate A kept its original appearance,
plate B was painted blue, plate C was affixed with a black ther-
mal paste, and plate D had an ultrathin aluminum sheet coated
with the solar selective coating. The four solar collector heat
plates were placed in the same environment: slightly sunny
weather, with an air temperature of 18 ◦ C, and a 3–4 grade
breeze. Their temperatures were observed through a thermal
imager, as shown in Figs. 7–10.
From the above figures, the average temperature of plate A
was 21.5 ◦ C, plate B was 26.8 ◦ C, plate C was 35.8 ◦ C, and
plate D was 36.2 ◦ C. The maximum temperature of plate D
was 37.2 ◦ C. It is clear that the aluminum alloy plate coated
with the selective coating had the best solar radiation absorp-
tion effect. Thus, it was feasible to design the solar collector
heat plate with this selective coating.
DENG et al.: MULTISOURCE ENERGY HARVESTING SYSTEM FOR WSN NODE IN FIELD ENVIRONMENT
Fig. 9. Physical map and thermography of plate C.
Fig. 10. Physical map and thermography of plate D.
Fig. 11. Experimental heat dissipation results on two kinds of radiators.
2) Cold End Design: Since the cold end needs to deliver
the heat of the thermoelectric generator rapidly, the cooling
devices are usually installed in the cold end.
However, the existing cooling device is too large to be suit-
able for the miniaturization required in this paper. A highly
thermally conductivity device heat pipe can quickly transfer
heat from one end to the other with the phase change of the
medium, and the ability of its heat transfer is far better than
that of metal conductors. Thus, we used the superconducting
thermal characteristics of the heat pipe and removed the heat
of the cold side so that the cold end could keep a low tempera-
ture. In order to verify the feasibility of this approach, we used
a flat copper heat pipe attached to the thermoelectric genera-
tor, and designed two groups of experiments. Group A used
the traditional metal fins for dissipation, and Group B used the
heat pipe combined with ordinary heat dissipation metal fins
to deliver the heat of the cold end. The other equipment and
experimental conditions were exactly the same in each group.
As can be seen from the thermal graph in Fig. 11, the tem-
perature of the metal fin radiator was very high, almost the
same as the hot end; meanwhile, the temperature of the heat
pipe radiator was relatively low, almost the same as the ambi-
ent temperature. Therefore, the thermoelectric generator was
designed as the core of the heat harvester subsystem, while
the solar collector heat plate was set on the hot end and the
heat pipe radiator was set on the cold end. Because the power
923
Fig. 12. PV characteristic curve of four thermoelectric generators in series
at a temperature difference of 30 ◦ C.
Fig. 13. PV characteristic curve of four thermoelectric generators in parallel
at a temperature difference of 46 ◦ C.
of one chip is small, we needed to use several chips. Under
the same experimental conditions, four thermoelectric gen-
erators were connected in series and in parallel, and tested
at temperature differences of 30 ◦ C and 46 ◦ C, respectively.
Figs. 12 and 13 show the PV characteristic curve of the two
sets of experiments.
From the experimental results, we can see that the efficiency
of thermoelectric generators in series was higher than those in
parallel. This may be because each thermoelectric generator is
not exactly the same, and power generation efficiency is also
different, thus giving rise to different power generation volt-
ages. Furthermore, the thermoelectric generators which have
the smaller power generation become a load that absorbs part
of the energy. In the parallel case, it is required that the consis-
tency and matching of the parameters of each thermoelectric
generator are almost the same. Since the series situation did
not need so many requirements, this system was more suitable.
From this experiment, it can also be seen that the efficiency
and power of the thermoelectric generator were relatively low.
In the three integrated power generation methods it can only
be an addition, not the main energy collection way. But it is
very meaningful for the accumulation of micro-energy, on the
circumstances of weak solar energy and wind energy, it could
collect the temperature difference of environment to generate.
Therefore, the future of micro-energy applications has very
broad prospects.
924
Fig. 14. Block diagram of energy storage subsystem.
TABLE III
P OWER C ONSUMPTION
TABLE IV
E XPERIMENTAL R ESULTS OF THE S OLAR PANELS
D. Energy Storage Subsystem
Due to the energy constrain, the control circuit of the energy
storage subsystem should reduce power consumption to save
energy, and thus the design of the control circuit should be
simple and have lower energy consumption. In this paper, we
connected the output of the collection and conversion subsys-
tem with the super-capacitor directly, and the output of the
super-capacitor supplied the sensor node. Therefore, we only
considered the control of the input and output of the energy
storage subsystem.
Since each of the three energy collection methods have dif-
ferent characteristics, their control circuits will be different.
The solar harvester subsystem had about 5 V dc output volt-
age on a sunny day, and about 2 V in bad weather. The output
voltage of the heat harvester subsystem was about 100 mV
because the temperature difference was small in the natural
environment. The output voltage of the wind harvester sub-
system was ac voltage, and had to be converted to dc. In
summary, the output of the three subsystems was not stable,
and changed with weather conditions; however, the maxi-
mum range was no more than 6 V. To simplify the system
to reduce power consumption, we put the three outputs in
parallel into a step-up module, which output a stable 5.5 V
to charge the super-capacitor. The design block diagram is
shown in Fig. 14.
IEEE INTERNET OF THINGS JOURNAL, VOL. 6, NO. 1, FEBRUARY 2019
TABLE V
E XPERIMENTAL R ESULTS OF THE W IND H ARVESTER S UBSYSTEM
TABLE VI
E XPERIMENTAL R ESULTS OF THE H EAT H ARVESTER S UBSYSTEM
Besides, the output voltage of the super-capacitor will
decrease linearly when it supplies to the load continuously,
which is different from ordinary lithium batteries. Therefore,
it is necessary to stabilize its output voltage to 3.3 V and limit
the current one-way output with a diode in the output circuit.
Finally, the schematic of the whole control circuit is as follows
in Fig. 15.
IV. E XPERIMENTS AND R ESULTS
According to the design scheme above, the self-powered
node system is shown in Fig. 16. In this section, the pro-
totyped platform was evaluated experimentally both indoor
and outdoor to verify the design scheme. This involved a
power consumption test of the wireless sensor node mod-
ule, and experimental verification of the energy collection and
conversion subsystem.
A. Power Consumption Test of the WSN Node
In our experiments, we used multisource energy harvest-
ing system to supply power for WSN node, thus, we first
did some power consumption test of the WSN node. In our
power consumption test, power consumption is divided into
three categories: 1) AD sampling; 2) wireless sensor commu-
nication; and 3) hardware (hardware includes the sensor nodes
and the sound sensors). The sensor node is CC2530, which is
a true system-on-chip solution for IEEE 802.15.4, ZigBee and
RF4CE applications, and the sound sensor is ADMP401. The
maximum power consumption of each portion is shown in
Table III.
From the test results of Table III, it can be seen that
the maximum power consumption was about 56 mW, when
the communication transmitted data. Meanwhile, if once the
system was in dormant state, only the sensor node was still
working and monitoring the surrounding environment, it only
needs about 20 mW to support its survival.
DENG et al.: MULTISOURCE ENERGY HARVESTING SYSTEM FOR WSN NODE IN FIELD ENVIRONMENT
Fig. 15. Schematic of the whole control circuit.
TABLE VII
E XPERIMENTAL R ESULTS OF THE S YSTEM O UTDOORS
Fig. 16. Designed self-powered node system.
B. Solar Harvester Subsystem Experiments
We conducted some experiments on the solar harvester sub-
system under the illumination simulator indoor. The results are
shown in Table IV.
From the experimental results it can be concluded that the
maximum power of the solar panel was about 900 mW in the
sunny day conditions (the light intensity was about 1000 W/m2
at noon). Even when the light intensity was 500 W/m2 , the
925
power could still reach 235 mW, which is far more than the
average power consumption of the system (50 mW). This met
the energy supply needs of the whole system.
C. Wind Harvester Subsystem Experiments
The results are shown in Table V. When the wind speed
was 3 m/s, the power was 2.9 mW; when the speed reached
7 m/s, the power reached 23 mW. The power of the wind
harvester subsystem was less than that of the solar harvester
subsystem. However, in the cloudy day condition, this power
was the main source of energy supply; the power consumption
was about 20 mW when the system was in monitoring mode,
which was enough to support the survival of the system when
the wind speed was large.
D. Heat Harvester Subsystem Experiments
It can be seen from Table VI that this power was very
weak, only about 3 mW. The main reason for this is that the
temperature difference between the two ends was small and
they easily reached thermal equilibrium. Though the amount
of energy harvested by heat is small, which is only from one
thermoelectric generator, we could use many thermoelectric
generators to improve the power, however, because this would
also increase the cost at the same time, solving this problem
will be part of our future work.
E. Experiments on the Self-Powered WSN Node System
In this experiment, we measured the daily power generation
and daily power consumption of the self-powered WSN node
926
system in the actual environment over nine days. The results
are shown in Table VII.
From the results it can be concluded that the generating
capacity was about 6000 J on a cloudy day, while the gen-
erating capacity reached about 9000 J on a sunny day. The
average daily power output was 7805.09 J, and the average
power consumption of the system was 2972.88 J/day. The
energy collected in a day was far more than the energy con-
sumption of the WSN node; thus, the self-powered WSN node
system could work regularly for a long time without a battery.
In the future research, we will focus on the miniaturization
technique of the multisource energy harvesting system. By that
time, the energy harvested by solar will reduce a lot because of
the reduction of the area of the solar panels. On the other hand,
there may be continuous cloudy days when the solar energy
harvester subsystem will not work in the field environment. At
that time, the energy harvested by wind and heat will be the
only power to supply for the WSN node system and maintain
the system in normal work state. So the three kinds of energy
are all important and we integrated three subsystem for the
WSN node system.
V. C ONCLUSION
In this paper, we presented the design, implementation,
and characterization of a hardware platform applicable to
self-powered WSN nodes. According to the application envi-
ronment, we designed a multisource energy harvesting system,
including wind, solar, and thermal energy harvesters, which
could make full use of the energy from the surrounding
environment. Using appropriate WSN hardware infrastructure
interfaces, the platform could continuously supply power to the
node over a long period of time. Experimental results demon-
strated that the average daily power output was 7805.09 J,
regardless of the weather; this is far more than the daily power
consumption of the node when it operates normally.
R EFERENCES
[1] J. A. Stankovic, T. F. Abdelzaher, C. Lu, L. Sha, and J. C. Hou, “Real-
time communication and coordination in embedded sensor networks,”
Proc. IEEE, vol. 91, no. 7, pp. 1002–1022, Jul. 2013.
[2] O. B. Akan, O. Cetinkaya, C. Koca, and M. Ozger, “Internet of hybrid
energy harvesting things,” IEEE Internet Things J., vol. 5, no. 2,
pp. 736–746, Apr. 2018.
[3] F. Deng et al., “Energy-based sound source localization with low power
consumption in wireless sensor networks,” IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron.,
vol. 64, no. 6, pp. 4894–4902, Jun. 2017.
[4] Y. K. Tan and S. K. Panda, “Energy harvesting from hybrid indoor
ambient light and thermal energy sources for enhanced performance
of wireless sensor nodes,” IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., vol. 58, no. 9,
pp. 4424–4435, Sep. 2011.
[5] V. C. Gungor and G. P. Hancke, “Industrial wireless sensor networks:
Challenges, design principles, and technical approaches,” IEEE Trans.
Ind. Electron., vol. 56, no. 10, pp. 4258–4265, Oct. 2009.
[6] A. Omairi, Z. H. Ismail, K. A. Danapalasingam, and M. I. Shapiai,
“Power harvesting in wireless sensor networks and its adaptation
with maximum power point tracking: Current technology and future
directions,” IEEE Internet Things J., vol. 4, no. 6, pp. 2104–2115,
Dec. 2017.
[7] W. K. G. Seah, Z. A. Eu, and H.-P. Tan, “Wireless sensor networks
powered by ambient energy harvesting (WSN-HEAP)—Survey and
challenges,” in Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. Wireless VITAE, May 2009,
pp. 1–5.
IEEE INTERNET OF THINGS JOURNAL, VOL. 6, NO. 1, FEBRUARY 2019
[8] O. Ozel, K. Tutuncuoglu, J. Yang, S. Ulukus, and A. Yener,
“Transmission with energy harvesting nodes in fading wireless chan-
nels: Optimal policies,” IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun., vol. 29, no. 8,
pp. 1732–1743, Sep. 2011.
[9] M. Gorlatova, A. Wallwater, and G. Zussman, “Networking low-power
energy harvesting devices: Measurements and algorithms,” in Proc.
IEEE Int. Conf. Comput. Commun., Apr. 2011, pp. 1602–1610.
[10] J. Yang and S. Ulukus, “Optimal packet scheduling in an energy har-
vesting communication system,” IEEE Trans. Commun., vol. 60, no. 1,
pp. 220–230, Jan. 2012.
[11] K. Tutuncuoglu and A. Yener, “Fading channels in energy harvesting
receivers,” in Proc. Inf. Theory Appl. Workshop, Feb. 2012, pp. 240–245.
[12] H. Mahdavi-Doost and R. D. Yates, “Fading channels in energy-
harvesting receivers,” in Proc. Conf. Inf. Sci. Syst., Mar. 2014, pp. 1–6.
[13] H. Mahdavi-Doost and R. D. Yates, “Energy harvesting receivers: Finite
battery capacity,” in Proc. IEEE Int. Symp. Inf. Theory, Mar. 2013,
pp. 1799–1803.
[14] Z. Shenqiu, A. Seyedi, and B. Sikdar, “An analytical approach to the
design of energy harvesting wireless sensor nodes,” IEEE Trans. Wireless
Commun., vol. 55, no. 6, pp. 4010–4024, Aug. 2013.
[15] F. Deng, H. Qiu, J. Chen, L. Wang, and B. Wang, “Wearable ther-
moelectric power generators combined with flexible supercapacitor
for low-power human diagnosis devices,” IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron.,
vol. 64, no. 2, pp. 1477–1485, Feb. 2017.
[16] P. Gui, F. Deng, Z. Liang, Y. Cai, and J. Chen, “Micro linear gener-
ator for harvesting mechanical energy from the human gait,” Energy,
vol. 154, pp. 365–373, Jul. 2018.
[17] S. Sudevalayam and P. Kulkarni, “Energy harvesting sensor nodes:
Survey and implications,” IEEE Commun. Surveys Tuts., vol. 13, no. 3,
pp. 443–461, 3rd Quart., 2011.
[18] J. W. Matiko, N. J. Grabham, S. P. Beeby, and M. J. Tudor, “Review of
the application of energy harvesting in buildings,” Meas. Sci. Technol.,
vol. 25, no. 1, pp. 1–25, Sep. 2013.
[19] R. Y. Kim, J.-S. Lai, B. York, and A. Koran, “Analysis and design
of maximum power point tracking scheme for thermoelectric battery
energy storage system,” IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., vol. 56, no. 9,
pp. 3709–3716, Sep. 2009.
[20] L. V. Allmen et al., “Aircraft strain WSN powered by heat storage har-
vesting,” IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., vol. 64, no. 9, pp. 7284–7292,
Sep. 2017.
[21] R. J. Ang, Y. K. Tan, and S. K. Panda, “Energy harvesting for
autonomous wind sensor in remote area,” in Proc. IEEE IECON,
Nov. 2007, pp. 2014–2019.
[22] X. Jiang, J. Polastre, and D. Culler, “Perpetual environmentally powered
sensor networks,” in Proc. IEEE IPSN, Apr. 2005, pp. 463–468.
[23] V. Raghunathan, A. Kansal, J. Hsu, J. Friedman, and M. B. Srivastava,
“Design considerations for solar energy harvesting wireless embedded
systems,” in Proc. IEEE IPSN, Apr. 2005, pp. 457–462.
[24] D. Dondi, A. Bertacchini, D. Brunelli, L. Larcher, and L. Benini,
“Modeling and optimization of a solar energy harvester system for self-
powered wireless sensor networks,” IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., vol. 55,
no. 7, pp. 2759–2766, Jul. 2008.
[25] Q. Wu, P. Tao, D. W. K. Ng, W. Chen, and R. Schober, “Energy-efficient
resource allocation for wireless powered communication networks,”
IEEE Trans. Wireless Commun., vol. 15, no. 3, pp. 2312–2327,
Mar. 2016.
[26] Z. Ding et al., “Application of smart antenna technologies in simulta-
neous wireless information and power transfer,” IEEE Commun. Mag.,
vol. 53, no. 4, pp. 86–93, Apr. 2015.
[27] Q. Wu, G. Y. Li, W. Chen, D. W. K. Ng, and R. Schober, “An overview
of sustainable green 5G communications,” IEEE Wireless Commun.,
vol. 24, no. 4, pp. 72–80, Aug. 2017.
[28] R. G. Cid-Fuentes, A. Cabellos-Aparicio, and E. Alarcón, “Area model
and dimensioning guidelines of multisource energy harvesting for nano-
micro interface,” IEEE Internet Things J., vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 18–26,
Feb. 2016.
[29] M. Magno et al., “Extended wireless monitoring through intelligent
hybrid energy supply,” IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., vol. 61, no. 4,
pp. 1871–1881, Apr. 2014.
[30] C. Park and P. H. Chou, “AmbiMax: Autonomous energy harvesting
platform for multi-supply wireless sensor nodes,” in Proc. IEEE Conf.
Sensors Mesh Ad Hoc Commun. Netw., Sep. 2006, pp. 168–177.
[31] H. Lhermet et al., “Efficient power management circuit: From thermal
energy harvesting to above-IC microbattery energy storage,” IEEE J.
Solid-State Circuits, vol. 43, no. 1, pp. 246–255, Jan. 2008.
DENG et al.: MULTISOURCE ENERGY HARVESTING SYSTEM FOR WSN NODE IN FIELD ENVIRONMENT
[32] A. Khaligh, P. Zeng, and C. Zheng, “Kinetic energy harvesting using
piezoelectric and electromagnetic technologies—State of the art,” IEEE
Trans. Ind. Electron., vol. 57, no. 3, pp. 850–860, Mar. 2010.
[33] M. A. Rubinstein, “Commercial thermoelectric generator applica-
tions and economic considerations,” Energy Convers., vol. 9, no. 4,
pp. 123–129, Dec. 1969.
[34] R. Mulley, Flow of Industrial Fluids: Theory and Equations.
Boca Raton, FL, USA: CRC Press, 2004.
[35] T. Burton, D. Sharpe, N. Jenkins, and E. Bossanyi, Wind Energy
Handbook, 2nd ed. Chichester, U.K.: Wiley, 2011.
[36] M. Boxwell, Solar Electricity Handbook: A Simple, Practical Guide to
Solar Energy, 2nd ed., Coventry, U.K.: Greenstream, 2010.
Fang Deng (SM’18) received the B.E. and Ph.D.
degrees in control science and engineering from the
Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China, in
2004 and 2009, respectively.
He is currently a Professor with the School
of Mathematics and Statistics and the School of
Automation, Beijing Institute of Technology. His
current research interests include nonlinear estima-
tion, fault diagnosis, control of renewable energy
resources, and wireless sensor networks.
Xianghu Yue received the B.E. degree in control
science and engineering from the Beijing Institute
of Technology, Beijing, China, in 2016, where he is
currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree in pattern recog-
nition at the School of Mathematics and Statistics.
His current research interests include spiking
neural networks, speech technology, and pattern
recognition.
927
Xinyu Fan received the B.E. and M.S. degrees in
control science and engineering from the Beijing
Institute of Technology, Beijing, China, in 2011 and
2013, respectively, where he is currently pursuing
the Ph.D. degree at the School of Automation.
His current research interests include photo-
voltaic systems, wind energy systems, and power
electronics.
Shengpan Guan received the B.E. degree from the
Ocean University of China, Qingdao, China, in 2014,
and the M.E. degree in control science and engineer-
ing from the Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing,
China, in 2016.
He is currently with the Qingdao Topscomm
Communication Company Ltd., Qingdao. His cur-
rent research interests include sound source local-
ization and wireless sensor networks.
Yue Xu is currently pursuing the undergraduation
degree at the School of Automation, Beijing Institute
of Technology, Beijing, China.
Her current research interests include renewable
energy resources and pattern recognition.
Jie Chen (SM’12) received the B.S., M.S., and
Ph.D. degrees in control science and engineering
from the Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing,
China, in 1986, 1996, and 2001, respectively.
He is currently a Professor with the School of
Automation, Beijing Institute of Technology. His
current research interests include complex systems,
multiagent systems, multiobjective optimization
and decision, constrained nonlinear control, and
optimization methods.