Wireless Energy Transfer Powered Wireless Sensor Node for Green IoT: Design, Implementation and Evaluation

Abstract

The number of IoT (Internet of Things) devices is predicted to increase dramatically in the years to come and their manufacturing and maintenance, including both commercial and ecological aspects associated with these, are gaining substantial attention. One of the effective ways of addressing both these issues at a time is the energy-neutral systems, which operate with the energy harvested from their environment. To address the major problem of this system, namely the low reliability, in the current paper, we develop and study the utility of a system powered solely with the wireless power transfer (WPT) over a radio frequency (RF) channel. In the article, we propose a methodology for developing and implementing a real-life IoT application based on RF WPT. We employ the proposed methodology to develop a WPT-powered solution to sense the temperature and the angular velocity in the rotating industrial environment. First, we discuss the key trade-offs arising when selecting and developing the new components for a WPT system. Then, we present and detail our solutions and describe the results of their evaluations. Finally, we instrument and evaluate the complete system, proving that it is capable of meeting all the design goals and requirements. The results reported in this paper can be of interest to the practitioners, for whom they provide a step-by-step methodology of WPT application development with a practical example. In addition, these results may be valuable for analysts, as they demonstrate many practical interrelations and effects specific to the real-life WPT applications.