Energy harvesting (EH) has graduated from emerging to have fully-emerged for supporting a whole host of industry applications, but particularly for applications in the ultra-low power (ULP) space such as for IoT/IIoT, wearable, and wireless sensor network (WSN) use-cases. We now have the ability to scavenge ambient power from every form of energy physics affords us. An ever-growing ecosystem (a.k.a. – Power IoT ecosystem) of EH transducers, power management solutions, integrated sensors, energy storage, networking SoCs, and ULP system components are enabling us to free ourselves from wires and even primary (i.e. – non-rechargeable) batteries. This half-day workshop shall cover a snapshot survey of some leading technology contributors in this space as well as key, supporting resources necessary to pragmatically enable EH integration and bring 1 T, self-powered sensors to mainstream, ubiquitous deployments.
9:00AM - 9:05AM PDT
Brian Zahnstecher, Principal, PowerRox
Opening Remarks
9:05AM - 9:45AM PDT
Speaker: Christian Fell, VP Technology & Custom Solutions/COO, POSITAL-FRABA
Title: Electrodynamic Energy Harvesting Systems
Description: Various methods of electrodynamic energy harvesting systems are known and used in various sensor and IoT applications. We will briefly compare some of the existing systems and their use cases and how they complement existing systems. The use of hybrid sensors, which do not only provide energy, but also generate the sensor information itself, is ideal for systems used in Motion Control and Flow Metering. The building blocks and functioning principle of currently used systems will be discussed and a technical outlook will be presented. We will also show potential applications of pure harvesting sensors based in a variety of applications.
9:50AM - 10:30AM PDT
Speaker: Dan Stieler, President, PowerFilm, Inc.
Title: Practical Design Consideration for Energy Harvesting with Solar
Description: As with any design details matter. In this session we will dive into various aspects of designing an effective solar energy harvesting system. Specifically we will discuss differences between indoor and outdoor light, how efficiency is determined and why high efficiency may not mean more power, PMIC features that optimize solar energy collection, and properly sizing your PV.
10:35AM a 11:15AM PDT
Speaker: Joe Ward, Director of Sales and Business Development, e-peas
Title: Power Management IC (PMIC): The Brain of the Self-Powered, IoT Evolution
Description: Harvesting energy from different sources such as small size photovoltaic cells (light), thermoelectric generators (thermal gradients), piezo and electromagnetic harvesters (vibration) or antennas (radio frequency) is made possible today thanks to dedicated energy harvesting power management ICs or PMICs. Indeed, power generated by EH transducers comes in various forms, AC or DC with voltages from a few tens of millivolts to several volts and currents varying from microamps to several hundreds of milliamps, constantly changing depending on the environmental conditions. The varying nature of the power generated by EH transducers also means the energy should be captured in storage elements capable of delivering the energy only when it is demanded by the load. This makes PMICs dedicated to energy harvesting a central piece of self-powered, IoT, and/or autonomous systems and explains why selecting one carefully and properly implementing its features is of top design importance. This presentation will highlight the parameters you should pay attention to when selecting your EH PMIC, with a particular focus on best practices associated with each EH source and design tips for fast implementation on the bench.
11:20AM - 12:00PM PDT
Speaker: Patrick Mercier, Associate Professor & Co-Director, Center for Wearable Sensors, University of California, San Diego
Title: Energy Harvesting and Self-Powered Sensing for Next-Generation 'Unaware-ables' and IoT
Description: Wearable and IoT devices hold considerable promise to diagnose, monitor, and treat various medical conditions and/or track the real-time status of humans, industrial plants, homes, or general environments. However, most current generation devices only monitor a limited number of parameters that are, in many cases, only peripherally related to many health conditions or enterprises. Furthermore, many such devices are large, bulky, and rigid, thereby precluding seamless integration into daily life, or offer poorer-than desired battery life, requiring expensive re-charge or replacement activities.
Addressing these issues requires: 1) development of new sensor technologies that provide more actionable data; 2) engineering of supporting electronic infrastructure to condition, digitize, and wirelessly communicate data in an extremely energy efficient manner; and 3) inclusion of energy harvesting solutions that will enable operation over ideally infinite time periods without having to recharge or replace batteries. This presentation will discuss emerging sensor technologies that can non-invasively monitor physiochemistry (e.g., glucose, blood alcohol concentration, and lactate), integrated circuit building blocks and architectures that make acquisition and telemetry of sensed information energy-efficient, and multi-modal energy harvesting solutions that combine power from multiple sources, including a look at biofuel-cell harvesters. Such net-zero-power operation will ultimately enable devices that are completely autonomous and invisible to the user, to the point where users are virtually unaware of their wearable devices after placement – in other words, they are “unaware-able” devices, with imaginable extensions to general IoT applications.
12:00PM - 12:30PM PDT
BONUS: Real-time, Functional, Interactive Demo Session
Please hang around after the symposium for the first ~30 min of your lunch time for a BONUS demonstration of technologies as our symposium presenters (and perhaps some extra bonus additions) give some real-time, functional demonstrations of energy harvesting solutions. Come see real HW & SW run off ambient energies before your eyes and get inspired to help drive your own applications and use-case scenarios!
