Wireless Power Transfer Solutions for ‘Things’ in the Internet of Things

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) has several applications in various industries and contexts. During the last decade, IoT technologies were mainly dominated by the supply chains and warehouses of large manufacturers and retailers. Recently, IoT technologies have been adopted in virtually all other fields, including healthcare, smart cities, and self-driving cars. While the opportunities for IoT applications are endless, challenges do exist. These challenges can be broadly classified as social, political, organizational, privacy, security, environmental, and technological challenges. In this paper, we focus on one dimension of the technological challenges, specifically on how IoT products/devices can be powered and charged without interruption, while either in use or in motion, since they are known to be intensively power consuming objects. This literature review paper explores how the emerging technology of Wireless Power Transfer (WPT) could aid in solving power and charging problems for various IoT devices. Our findings suggest that in theory, WPT can indeed be used to solve IoT’s intelligent devices, or “things”, charging and power challenges. However, we found that human exposure and safety, industrial context, environmental issues, and cost of technology are important factors that could affect WPT adoption in organizations.