A vibration-powered self-contained node by profiling mechanism and its application in cleaner agricultural production

Abstract

The vibration-based electromagnetic energy harvester offers a cost-effective and promising renewable energy approach. With the rapid development of autonomous agricultural production, advanced agricultural machinery equipped with multiple sensors is of significant importance. In the hilly areas of southwest China, the driver of the pennisetum sinese roxb harvester must frequently adjust the height of the stripping header to adapt to the terrain height variation and it leads to high labor intensity. Because of the harness environment of the working condition, the arrangement of wires for sensors is almost impossible. Thus, a self-powered sensor node by profiling mechanism with a vibration energy harvester is proposed. This paper presents theoretical and experimental research on a profiling mechanism using a vibration energy harvester, with which a detailed theoretical model is established to perform the dynamic simulation study. Diverse excitation conditions such as sinusoidal sweeping vibration tests, fixed frequency vibration and stochastic road spectrum tests of agricultural machinery were implemented to verify the power generation capacity. The simulation results agree well with the experimental data. Experimental results show the peak-peak voltage and power of the proposed device reach about 44 V and 113 mW under low frequency and large displacement excitations. The vibration test justifies the feasibility of the proposed profiling mechanism in the application scene for powering the range sensor applied in agricultural production.