Piezoelectric energy harvesting in wireless sensor networks

Abstract

The Usage of small scale and low power portable and wireless electronic devices is significantly increasing in wireless sensor networks (WSN). Also due to increase in number of these small scale devices, energy consumption is experiencing a substantial growth. Different researchers are now having a great interest in energy harvesting. Piezoelectric materials are assumed as excellent for power generation due to their better coupling properties. Piezoelectric material PZT-5H is used to harvest energy in wireless sensor network due to its very high permittivity and sensitivity property. These materials have electromechanical properties which are used to harvest energy. A cantilevered plate of size 16mm × 16mm × 1mm is considered. Finite element modeling of a plate is done and first five natural frequencies are calculated. Natural frequency is used to calculate the power which is further used to calculate the generated voltage with the help of resistive load. These materials can be used as sensors and actuators and can also be implemented in micro electromechanical systems. This paper presents an analysis of energy harvesting with micro electromechanical systems (MEMS). In this paper, a power of 155.2 µW and voltage of 5.8573 V has been generated with 1 mg of mass with device having a resonant frequency of 1766.5 Hz.