Hybrid Clean Energy Harvesting System for Low Power Applications

Abstract

Energy harvesting from the renewable sources has been the main concern in the present scenario. Till now most of the researchers focused on harvesting solar energy and wind energy. However the small amount of energy harvesting without affecting environment is very important. In the recent years mobile communication has become a part of our daily life, extracting energy from the Radio Frequency (RF) signals used everywhere is an attractive solution to the existing energy problem. Another major source of harvesting small amount of energy is from the human body heat. The energy extractions from these sources are emerging as a guaranteed alternative way to substitute the available energy resource to some extent. This paper presents a hybrid model which consists of two sections. First being the harvesting of energy from the RF signals in the range of GSM 4G band (1800-2100 MHz) using a micro-strip patch antenna followed by impedance matching circuit to reduce the dissipated power between load and antenna. Then a rectifier circuit that converts RF into DC signals is used and finally a voltage multiplier circuit is used to boost up the DC voltage. Second section consists of Thermo Electric Generator (TEG) module which converts human body heat into electricity, followed by a voltage booster to increase the level of voltage. The main objective of this work is to find a way to design a hybrid system that can harvest energy from RF signals as well as human body heat and the combined energy that is harvested can be used to power up low voltage implant device.