Comprehensive evaluation method of micro-energy harvesters for power supply of outdoor wireless sensors

Abstract

Abstract There have been many solar or wind micro-energy collection technologies for outdoor wireless sensors, but it is difficult to compare them horizontally and choose the appropriate scheme. To overcome this problem, this paper proposes a comprehensive evaluation method of micro-energy harvesters which includes an evaluation matrix composed of three types of indexes and the corresponding test method. After the evaluation matrix is obtained by testing, a CRITIC-based weight calculation method is used to get a comprehensive score. Finally, ten commonly used solar or wind micro-energy harvesters in five typical regions are compared horizontally by the proposed method. The results show that the evaluation method can comprehensively consider various factors, and harvesters with higher comprehensive scores tend to have more balanced performance in all aspects. Furthermore, in regions with rich wind resources, the wind and solar harvesters have complementary time-domain characteristics.