Wind-driven self-powered wireless environmental sensors for Internet of Things at long distance

Abstract

As the technology of the Internet of Things (IoT) develops, trillions of wireless nodes need to be powered. It's of significant importance to design self-powered systems by utilizing tirboelectric nanogenerators (TENG) to harness energy from environment. In this paper, a wind-driven self-powered wireless environmental sensing system is presented. A TENG working in the contact-separation mode with high output performance is designed and optimized to convert wind energy into electricity. Nine TENG units are then assembled into a 3D printed shell and demonstrated as a power source for two environmental monitoring systems. At a wind speed of 4.5 m/s, a Carbon monoxide (CO) monitor works sustainably and sends out a signal from 1.5 km away every 18 min, by using the radio transmission with 433 MHz ultrahigh frequency (Sub-1G). Another temperature and humidity hybrid sensor can send out the monitoring data every 9 min through Bluetooth (2.4 GHz) in a range of 50 m. Above all, this wind-driven self-powered system constructs a platform, which can be widely used in any other wireless remote environmental sensing scene, requiring sustainability and free of maintenance. Self-powered wireless environmental sensors (SWES) combined with wind-TENG is designed to address the problem of energy consumption, automatic detection and environmental protection. By collecting wind energy, the SWES can transmit sensing data with a distance reaching up to 1.5 km in 18 min, which will affect the development of environmental detection enormously on Internet of Things area. • Different TENG structure's parameters are optimized achieving highest output performance. • The self-powered sensor can transmit environmental data within 50 m in 9 min. • The self-powered sensor can transmit environmental data away from 1.5 km in 18 min. • The robust system can adapt complicated environment.