Sustainable energy harvesting system for low-power underwater sensing devices

Abstract

In marine scientific research, ocean monitoring is crucial where the battery powered sensor devices are placed under the water to collect different information like temperature, pressure, and turbidity in underwater sensor networks (UWSNs). Thus, keeping these devices active for longer periods is challenging. In the last decades, the piezoelectric transducer (PZT) material has been used widely for constructing more environmentally friendly energy harvesting systems. The PZT harvester offers a promising solution by eliminating the need for batteries for running devices in the future with less maintenance. The PZT harvester allows the system to generate higher voltage to run low-power devices. This paper designed and developed a new renewable energy harvester system using PZT transducers for running different types of underwater sensor devices like temperature, turbidity, and obstacle sensors. The proposed PZT-based energy harvester employs a two stage amplification model for generating higher voltage and current to run multiple devices. The sensing information collected from these sensors is transmitted to the cloud which is later utilized for analysis and decision making. Experiment results show the proposed PZT-based energy harvester can generate a voltage of 13 volts (V) and a current of 43.3 milliampere (mA) equivalent to 562 milliwatt (mW) which is very good to run multiple low-power underwater sensor devices.