An Energy Management Unit for Predictive Solar Energy Harvesting IoT

Abstract

As the need for stand-alone energy harvesting devices increases, the alleviation of the ecological and economic impact of their production and maintenance is possible by increasing battery life while reducing needed battery capacity. However, the increasing energy requirements of far-edge Artificial Intelligence and long-range wireless transmissions in the Internet of Things threaten to demand ever-larger battery capacities for such remote devices. Dynamic adaptation of device operation based on harvestable energy - i.e., energy awareness - is a proposed solution and can be implemented using an energy management unit. Standardizing this unit as a separate, active electronic component with standardized drivers can simplify overall system development and benefit existing devices. Hence, we propose a novel interface that allows decoupling this unit from the rest of the system, independent of the power management unit in use. As a first step, we developed a prototype that uses the proposed interface to make existing, solar energy-based, third-party devices energy-aware with provisions to be cross-compatible with differing power management units. The prototype was evaluated using an air quality sensing device and improved the overall device's transmission rate.