A nonlinear electromagnetic energy harvesting system for self-powered wireless sensor nodes

Abstract

The Internet of things requires long-life wireless sensor nodes powered by the harvested energy from environments. This paper proposes a nonlinear electromagnetic energy harvesting system which may be used to construct fully self-powered wireless sensor nodes. Based on a nonlinear electromagnetic energy harvester (EMEH) with high output voltage, the model of a nonlinear interface circuit is derived and a power management circuit (PMC) is designed. The proposed PMC uses a buck-boost direct current-direct current (DC-DC) converter to match the load resistance of the nonlinear interface circuit. It includes two open-loop branches, which is beneficial to the optimization of the impedance matching. The circuit is able to work even if the stored energy is completely drained. The energy harvesting system successfully powered a wireless sensor node. Experimental results show that, under base excitations of 0.3 g and 0.4 g (where 1 g = 9.8 m.s-2) at 8 Hz, the charging efficiencies of the proposed circuit are 172% and 28.5% higher than that of the classic standard energy-harvesting (SEH) circuit. The experimental efficiency of the PMC is 41.7% under an excitation of 0.3 g at 8 Hz.