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Low-Power Wireless Sensor Networks

A special issue of Sensors (ISSN 1424-8220). This special issue belongs to the section "Sensor Networks".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 January 2021) | Viewed by 13007

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell'Informazione—Università Politecnica delle Marche, Ancona, Italy
Interests: design of low-power electronic systems; energy harvesting

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Guest Editor
Department of Information Engineering, Università Politecnica delle Marche, 61030 Ancona, Italy
Interests: statistical device modelling and simulation; cyber-physical system simulation; linear and nonlinear system identification; nonlinear stochastic systems; digital signal processing
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Information Engineering (DII), Università Politecnica delle Marche, 60131 Ancona, Italy
Interests: network protocols; wireless sensor networks; Internet of Things; signal processing
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The recent rapid improvement of Internet of Things and wireless sensor networks technologies has allowed a wide diffusion in many different applications.

Usually, the cost of accessing the sensors and, therefore, the cost for the replacement or recharge of batteries is high. In these cases, the main specification in the design of the network is low power consumption in order to keep the network alive for a long time.

The smart node of the WSN consists of sensors that acquire data, a data processing system, wireless network management, energy storage, and energy management. The design of a low-power wireless sensor network requires the joint optimization of the parameters of the complete system, from the hardware of the sensor up to the network and application layer.

The objective of this Special Issue is to present the state-of-the-art of the design methodologies of low-power wireless sensor networks in different application fields.

The Special Issue includes but is not limited to the following topics:

  • Energy harvesting for WSN
  • Energy storage for WSN
  • Wearable energy storage
  • Power management techniques for low energy IoT devices
  • Low-power IoT sensors
  • Low-power wireless routing protocols
  • Low-power wireless network topologies
  • Low-power WSN for structural health monitoring
  • Low-power WSN for smart cities
  • Low-power wearable wireless sensors for healthcare

Dr. Massimo Conti
Dr. Simone Orcioni
Dr. Paola Pierleoni
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • wireless sensor networks
  • low power
  • energy harvesting
  • energy storage
  • IoT

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Published Papers (3 papers)

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15 pages, 4354 KiB  
Article
An Energy-Efficient UWB Transmitter with Wireless Injection Locking for RF Energy-Harvesting Sensors
by Jun-Tae Kim, Bo-Ram Heo and Ickjin Kwon
Sensors 2021, 21(4), 1426; https://doi.org/10.3390/s21041426 - 18 Feb 2021
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2959
Abstract
An ultralow-power ultrawideband (UWB) transmitter with an energy-efficient injection-locked radio frequency (RF) clock harvester that generates a carrier from an RF signal is proposed for RF energy-harvesting Internet-of-Things (IoT) sensor applications. The energy-efficient RF clock harvester based on the injection-locked ring oscillator (ILRO) [...] Read more.
An ultralow-power ultrawideband (UWB) transmitter with an energy-efficient injection-locked radio frequency (RF) clock harvester that generates a carrier from an RF signal is proposed for RF energy-harvesting Internet-of-Things (IoT) sensor applications. The energy-efficient RF clock harvester based on the injection-locked ring oscillator (ILRO) is proposed to achieve optimal locking range and minimum input sensitivity to obtain an injection-locked 450 MHz clock in ultralow-power operation. A current-starved inverter-based delay stage is adopted that allows delay adjustment by bias voltage to minimize dynamic current consumption while maintaining a constant delay regardless of changes in process, supply voltage, and temperature (PVT). To minimize static current consumption, a UWB transmitter based on a digital-based UWB pulse generator and a pulse-driven switching drive amplifier is proposed. The proposed injection-locked RF clock harvester achieves the best RF input sensitivity of −34 dBm at a power consumption of 2.03 μW, enabling energy-efficient clock harvesting from low RF input power. In ultralow-power operation, a 23.8% locking range is achieved at the RF injection power of −15 dBm to cope with frequency changes due to PVT variations. The proposed UWB transmitter with RF clock harvester achieves the lowest energy consumption per pulse with an average power consumption of 97.03 μW and an energy consumption of 19.41 pJ/pulse, enabling operation with the energy available in RF energy-harvesting applications. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Low-Power Wireless Sensor Networks)
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18 pages, 2490 KiB  
Article
Self-Powered Wireless Sensor Using a Pressure Fluctuation Energy Harvester
by Jesus Javier Aranda, Sebastian Bader and Bengt Oelmann
Sensors 2021, 21(4), 1546; https://doi.org/10.3390/s21041546 - 23 Feb 2021
Cited by 10 | Viewed by 3723
Abstract
Condition monitoring devices in hydraulic systems that use batteries or require wired infrastructure have drawbacks that affect their installation, maintenance costs, and deployment flexibility. Energy harvesting technologies can serve as an alternative power supply for system loads, eliminating batteries and wiring requirements. Despite [...] Read more.
Condition monitoring devices in hydraulic systems that use batteries or require wired infrastructure have drawbacks that affect their installation, maintenance costs, and deployment flexibility. Energy harvesting technologies can serve as an alternative power supply for system loads, eliminating batteries and wiring requirements. Despite the interest in pressure fluctuation energy harvesters, few studies consider end-to-end implementations, especially for cases with low-amplitude pressure fluctuations. This generates a research gap regarding the practical amount of energy available to the load under these conditions, as well as interface circuit requirements and techniques for efficient energy conversion. In this paper, we present a self-powered sensor that integrates an energy harvester and a wireless sensing system. The energy harvester converts pressure fluctuations in hydraulic systems into electrical energy using an acoustic resonator, a piezoelectric stack, and an interface circuit. The prototype wireless sensor consists of an industrial pressure sensor and a low-power Bluetooth System-on-chip that samples and wirelessly transmits pressure data. We present a subsystem analysis and a full system implementation that considers hydraulic systems with pressure fluctuation amplitudes of less than 1 bar and frequencies of less than 300 Hz. The study examines the frequency response of the energy harvester, the performance of the interface circuit, and the advantages of using an active power improvement unit adapted for piezoelectric stacks. We show that the interface circuit used improves the performance of the energy harvester compared to previous similar studies, showing more power generation compared to the standard interface. Experimental measurements show that the self-powered sensor system can start up by harvesting energy from pressure fluctuations with amplitudes starting at 0.2 bar at 200 Hz. It can also sample and transmit sensor data at a rate of 100 Hz at 0.7 bar at 200 Hz. The system is implemented with off-the-shelf circuits. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Low-Power Wireless Sensor Networks)
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21 pages, 6609 KiB  
Article
An Adaptive TE-PV Hybrid Energy Harvesting System for Self-Powered IoT Sensor Applications
by Mahmuda Khatun Mishu, Md. Rokonuzzaman, Jagadeesh Pasupuleti, Mohammad Shakeri, Kazi Sajedur Rahman, Shuza Binzaid, Sieh Kiong Tiong and Nowshad Amin
Sensors 2021, 21(8), 2604; https://doi.org/10.3390/s21082604 - 8 Apr 2021
Cited by 30 | Viewed by 5343
Abstract
In this paper, an integrated thermoelectric (TE) and photovoltaic (PV) hybrid energy harvesting system (HEHS) is proposed for self-powered internet of thing (IoT)-enabled wireless sensor networks (WSNs). The proposed system can run at a minimum of 0.8 V input voltage under indoor light [...] Read more.
In this paper, an integrated thermoelectric (TE) and photovoltaic (PV) hybrid energy harvesting system (HEHS) is proposed for self-powered internet of thing (IoT)-enabled wireless sensor networks (WSNs). The proposed system can run at a minimum of 0.8 V input voltage under indoor light illumination of at least 50 lux and a minimum temperature difference, ∆T = 5 °C. At the lowest illumination and temperature difference, the device can deliver 0.14 W of power. At the highest illumination of 200 lux and ∆T = 13 °C, the device can deliver 2.13 W. The developed HEHS can charge a 0.47 F, 5.5 V supercapacitor (SC) up to 4.12 V at the combined input voltage of 3.2 V within 17 s. In the absence of any energy sources, the designed device can back up the complete system for 92 s. The sensors can successfully send 39 data string to the webserver within this time at a two-second data transmission interval. A message queuing telemetry transport (MQTT) based IoT framework with a customised smartphone application ‘MQTT dashboard’ is developed and integrated with an ESP32 Wi-Fi module to transmit, store, and monitor the sensors data over time. This research, therefore, opens up new prospects for self-powered autonomous IoT sensor systems under fluctuating environments and energy harvesting regimes, however, utilising available atmospheric light and thermal energy. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Low-Power Wireless Sensor Networks)
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