Piezoelectric energy harvesting: a developing scope for low-power applications

Abstract

The area of energy harvesting using vibration sources has attracted numerous researchers over the past few years. It has a great potential to have extended lifetime of low-power devices such as wireless sensors, portable devices, and wearable devices. The wireless devices in today’s date require batteries which have a limited lifetime and needs to be replaced with time. In case of wireless sensors that work in harsh environment, it is nearly impossible to replace batteries. The concept of energy harvesting aims to develop devices that do not require replaceable batteries. This is done by converting available energy from the environment into electrical energy to power wireless devices. This paper is focused on piezoelectric energy harvesting. First, different approaches to harvest energy have been discussed in brief. After that piezoelectric energy harvesting has been discussed in detail. Different components of piezoelectric energy harvesting circuit namely transducers, rectifiers, and storage devices have been discussed.