Energy Harvesting from the

environment
and daily activities
Click to edit Presents Name

Eisa Zarepour
PHD Candidate
School of Computer Science and Engineering, University of New South
Wales, Sydney, Australia.
ezarepour@cse.unsw.edu.au

Energy Harvesting

Outline
- Energy Harvesting (EH)
- Ambient Radio Frequency (RF) Energy Harvesting
-

The concept
Equations
An example

- Other possibilities for EH in daily life

-

From Temperature variation

From Pressure variation
From humidity variation
From users activities (Sara will present)

- Few Nano-scale EHs Schemas

- iOS Programming for the assignment
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Energy Harvesting

The concept

Energy harvesting(alsoknownaspower harvestingorenergy

scavenging)istheprocessbywhichenergyisderivedfromexternal
sources.

Ambient Energy sources

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Energy Harvesting

Example

Harvesting Energy from

the Human Motions

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Energy Harevsting

Example

Harvesting Energy from the Natural Vibration o

f Human Walking

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Harvesting energy from

Radio Frequency (RF) radiations

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RF Energy Harvesting

Ambient RF Energy sources

Users

Backbones

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/this-is-what-the-electromagnetic-field-surrounding-you-so
unds-like
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RF Energy Harvesting

Tx

The concept

Rx

Base
statio
n

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RF Energy Harvesting

The concept

ReceivedpowerfromRadioFrequencyradiationscanbeharvestedas
asignal=energy+/data.
Received
Power

Decode

Harvest

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RF Energy Harvesting

Beacons

How we can harvest energy from an anonymous access point?

According to the IEEE 802.11 standard, every compliant Access Point (AP)
periodicallysendsoutmanagementframescalledbeacon frames.
ThepurposeofbeaconframesistoadvertisethepresenceofanAPinanarea,its
capabilities, and some configuration and security information to the client
devices.
The time interval between two consecutive beacon frames is called the beacon
interval which is a configurable parameters that determine the beacon rate per
second().
isusuallybetween10-50.
Eachbeaconcontainsaround63bytesinformationor500bits.
As transmitter is using an electromagnetic wave to represent and transfer a bit,
the energy of each single bit can be harvested at the receiver.
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RF Energy Harvesting

Beacon structure

The Beacon will be relatively constant in length. You can

calculate it as follows:
802.11MACheader:24bytes
FixedBeaconfields:11bytes
Variablefields:
SSID:2bytesplusthenumberofbytesintheSSID
Supportedrates:6bytes
DSparameters:3bytes
TIM:5bytes(usually,whennostationsaresleeping)
Country:6bytes(optional)
FCS(fixedfield):4bytes
Total:61bytesplusthenumberofbytesintheSSID

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RF Energy Harvesting

Energy calculations

The signal strength ofAPis usually in dBm (Android also gives in dBm).We
canusebelowconversiontomakeitappropriateforthesecondequation:
P(W)=1W10(P_dBm/10)/1000=10((P_dBm -30)/10)

Forexample,theequivalentWattofa-60dBmsignalisonenanoWatt(10-9W).
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RF Energy Harvesting

Energy calculations

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RF Energy Harvesting

An example

Let us assume we have this trace of RSS for a given AP over time .

t1
t2

Time Stamp

RSS (dBm)

2014-09-0812:44:22

-64

2014-09-0812:44:23

-63

2014-09-0812:44:24

-70

2014-09-0812:44:25

-55

Average

-63 dBM (5*10-10 W)

= 4 *10*500*5*10-10 =10-5 W (10 W)

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RF Energy Harvesting

In Android , you can use startScan/getScanResults

methodsfromWiFiMangerclasstodiscovertheavailable
accesspointsandthenidentifytheirspecssuchasSSID
andstrengthindB(lab2).
More information
http://webapps.cse.unsw.edu.au/webcms2/course/index.php?
cid=2369
http://developer.android.com/reference/android/net/wifi/ScanResult.
html#level

Getting WiFi AP information in iOS

MobileWiFiframeworkistheframeworkthatmanages
WiFifunctionalityoniOS.
More information
http://iphonedevwiki.net/index.php/MobileWiFi.framework
https://github.com/Cykey/airscan/blob/master/main.c
forhowtogetwifiinformation

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RF Energy Harvesting
Instruction

1-Whileyouarewalkingortravellingviaavehicle,findoutallavailable
wirelessaccesspointsaroundyouevery second.
2-Foreach access point extractandsavetheseinformation(fromlab2):
- Network name (field:SSID)
- FrequencyinMHz(field:frequency)
- Signal strength indBm(filed:level)
3-Savealldatafromsteptwoinanexcelorcsvfileincludingthesecolumns:
-

DateandTimeintheformatofyyyy-MM-ddHH:mm:ss
PositiondatafromGPSincludinglongitude,latitudeandspeed(fromlab3)
Networkname(SSID)
Frequency
Signalstrength

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RF Energy Harvesting
Why we need to record frequency of APs and also the location data ?
PerformingfurtheranalysisonthetypesofAPsbasedontheirfrequencies.
Performing location analysis which can help to find the potential area for
harvestingRFenergy(e.g.academicarea,trainstations,etc.)

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Other possibility for harvesting

energy in daily activities
-

VariationinTemperature
VariationinPressure
VariationinHumidity
User activity (kinetic)

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Harvesting energy from

Temperature variation

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From Temperature Variation

Power can be harvested from temperature variation via
Pyroelectric Generators

Pyroelectric voltage at time t can be

calculated as:

PV is pyroelectric voltage coefficient, rd is

the Debye length of ZnO and T(t) is the
variation of temperature at time interval
of [t-1; t] in Kelvin
The detectable current i(t) of a pyroelectric material is proportional to the
rate of change of its temperature and can be expressed as:

PC is the pyroelectric current coefficient and A is the surface area of the

electrode connected to the pyroelectric material
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From Temperature Variation

You can read the ambient air temperature
and device temperature via these two
sensors:
1. TYPE_AMBIENT_TEMPERATURE
2. TYPE_TEMPERATURE
More information
http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/s
ensors/sensors_environment.html

Instruction

1- Read the output of those two temperature

sensors every second
2- Save the resulted data in an excel file
including these columns:
- Date and Time in the format of yyyy-MM-dd
HH:mm:ss
- Position data from GPS including longitude,
latitude and speed (from lab3)
- Ambient air temperature
- Device temperature
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Harvesting energy from

Pressure variation

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From Atmospheric Pressure Variation

Power can be harvested from atmospheric pressure variation
ForafixedvolumeVofgas,thechangeinenergyEduetoachangeinpressure
Pis(reference):E=PV(pressureinPascal)
Forexample,localpressurecanchangearound3040mbar(34kPa)duringcyclonic
weather events, a more typical daily pressure change is 3 mbar (300 Pa). With a
devicevolumeof1cm^3thiswillprovide300mJ/cm3(around3nWperday)

You can read the atmospheric air pressure via barometer sensor( TYPE_PRESSURE
)
More information
http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/sensors/sensors_environment.html

ItwillprovidethepressureinmbarorhPascal.Intheaboveformula,weneed
pressureinPascal.EachmbarorhPascalisequalto100Pascal.
The output of barometer in two time slots t1 and t2 which is P1and P2,
respectively,canbeusedtocalculateP=P2-P1
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From Atmospheric Pressure Variation

Instruction
1- Read the output of barometer sensor every minutes.
2- Save the resulted data in an excel file including these
columns:
- Date and Time in the format of yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss
- Position data from GPS including longitude, latitude
and speed (from lab3)
- Ambient air pressure
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Harvesting energy from

Humidity variation

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From Humidity Variation

Power can be harvested from relative humidity changes

The ability to obtain a potential difference across membranes separating two
aqueoussolutionsofdifferingsaltconcentrationshasbeenknownforoverhalfa
century.
Based on this concept, several approaches have been proposed to use humidity
changes to make such potential difference. For example, a solid-state
electrochemical cell can benefit from changes in the relative humidity of the
surrounding environment to produce electricity (Reference) and the resulted
voltagewouldbe:

Visthetheoreticalmembranepotential (JC-1orV),Risthegasconstant (Jmol-1K-1),Tis

the absolute temperature (in Kelvin, K), z is the electrochemical valence, F is Faraday's
constant(Cmol-1).
1%variationinhumiditycancreatesaroundmaximumof0.4mVpotentialdifference.
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From Humidity Variation

You can read the Ambient relative humidity from the mobile sensor (
TYPE_RELATIVE_HUMIDITY)in%.
Moreinformation:
http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/sensors/sensors_environment.html
Ifyoureadtherelativehumidityintwoconsequenttimeslotsoft 1andt2whichis
RH1andRH2,respectively,thenwecanusethebelowformulatocalculatethe
potentialvoltage:

Where

Risgasconstant:8.3145
FisFaraday'sconstant:9.65*104
Zistheelectrochemicalvalence:around32.5intheaforementionedpaper.
TistemperatureinKelvinwhichcanbemeasuredviaphonesensororuseaconstantof305Kas
anaveragenormalweathertemperature.
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From Humidity Variation

Instruction
1-

Read
the output of
humidity
and
temperature sensor every
minutes.
2- Save the resulted data in
an excel file including
these columns:
- Date and Time in the
format of yyyy-MM-dd
HH:mm:ss
- Position data from GPS
including
longitude,
latitude and speed (
from lab3)
- Relative humidity in %
- Air temperature (from
the phone sensor or
weather
apps)Science and Engineering
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Some Nano-scale Energy Harvesting Devices

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Energy Harvesting for NSNs

From thermal and motion
(1)

Pyroelectric Nanogenerators for Har

vesting Thermoelectric Energy
Ya Yang, Wenxi Guo, Ken C. Pradel,
Guang Zhu, Yusheng Zhou, Yan Zhang,
Youfan Hu, Long Lin, and Zhong Lin
Wang, Nano Letters, 2012, 12 (6), 2833
2838

Harvesting vibration energy by a tri
ple-cantilever based triboelectric n
anogenerator
"Weiqing Yang, Jun Chen, Guang Zhu,
Xiaonan Wen, Peng Bai, Yuanjie Su, Yuan
Lin, and Zhonglin Wang, Nano Research,
Online

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Energy Harvesting for NSNs From magnetic field and gravity

(2)

Self-Powered Magnetic Sensor

Based on a Triboelectric Na
nogenerator
"Ya Yang, Long Lin, Yue Zhang,
Qingshen Jing, Te-Chien Hou, and
Zhong Lin Wang,ACS NANO, 2012,
Online

Nano-Newton Transverse Force Sen
sor Using a Vertical GaN Nanowir
e based on the Piezotronic Effec
t
"Yu Sheng Zhou, Ronan Hinchet, Ya
Yang, Gustavo Ardila, Rudeesun
Songmuang, Fang Zhang, Yan Zhang,
Weihua Han, Ken Pradel, Laurent
Monts, Mireille Mouis, and Zhong Lin
Wang, Advanced Materials, 2012,
Online

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Energy Harvesting for NSNs From water wave and hydropower

(3)

Hybrid triboelectric nanogener
ator for harvesting water wave
energy and as a self-powered
distress signal emitter
Yuanjie Su, Xiaonan Wen, Guang
Zhu, Jin Yang, Jun Chen, Peng Bai,
Zhiming Wu, Yadong Jiang, Zhong
Lin Wang, Nano Energy, 2014,
Online

Multi-layered disk triboelectric
nanogenerator for harvesting hy
dropower
"Yannan Xie, Sihong Wang, Simiao
Niu, Long Lin, Qingshen Jing, Yuanjie
Su, Zhengyun Wu, Zhong Lin Wang,
Nano Energy, 2014, 6, 129136
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Energy Harvesting for NSNs

Hybrid schemas (1)
(4)
Simultaneously
harvesting
mechanical and chemical energies
by a hybrid cell for self-powered
biosensors
and
personal
electronics"Ya Yang, Hulin Zhang, Jun
Chen, Sangmin Lee, Te-Chien Hou and
Zhong
Lin
Wang,
Energy&Environmental Science, 2013,
"Compact
Hybrid Cell Based on a
Online
Convoluted Nanowire Structure for
Harvesting Solar and Mechanical
Energy" Chen Xu and Zhong Lin
Wang,Adv. Mater., 23(7), 873877.
Hybrid cells for simultaneously
harvesting multi-type energies for
self-powered
micro/nanosystemsChen Xu,Caofeng
Pan,Ying Liu,Z.L. Wang, Nano Energy,
2012, 1, 259-272
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Energy Harvesting for NSNs

Hybrid schemas (2)
(5)
Flexible
hybrid
cell
for
simultaneously
harvesting
thermal
and
mechanical
energies"Sangmin
Lee,
SungHwan Bae, Long Lin, Seunghyun
Ahn, Chan Park, Sang-Woo Kim,
Seung Nam Cha, Young Jun Park,
Zhong Lin Wang, Nano Energy,
2013, 2, 817-825
Flexible Hybrid Energy Cell for
Simultaneously
Harvesting
Thermal, Mechanical, and Solar
Energies"Ya Yang, Hulin Zhang,
Guang Zhu, Sangmin Lee, ZongHong Lin, and Zhong Lin Wang,
ACS NANO, 2012, Online

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