AA-battery sized energy harvesting power management module for indoor light wireless sensor applications

Abstract

Wireless sensor nodes and pocket devices are mostly supplied by batteries. These storage units are efficient but often not rechargeable or recycled. This leads to environmental and sustainability problems, which are avoided by implementing new types of environmentally-powered systems. In this work we present a new high-efficiency power management module for indoor light applications, which is fitted into an AA battery size adapter. This prototype can be used instead of AA-batteries to supply many low power devices by storing the energy collected from a solar cell into a built-in supercapacitor.