Abstract
This chapter highlights the importance and significance of energy harvesting in applications involving use of active RF sensors and ID tags. The chapter begins by providing a basic overview on radio frequency identification (RFID) operation, various types of RFID tags, and the need for energy harvesting, especially for active RFID tags. Unlike passive tags, active tags utilize a battery to emit rather than reflect or backscatter RF energy. Advantages of active tags include improved range and read rate in electromagnetically unfriendly environments and improved link quality. Typical applications include monitoring enterprise/supply chain assets (e.g. laptops, computers, peripherals, electronic equipment, pallets, inventory items, etc.), personnel, patients, vehicles, and containers. Although a battery can substantially improve performance, it limits maintenance-free operational life. Therefore, harvesting energy from sources such as vibration or light has been shown to address this shortcoming but these sources must be adequate, available throughout the life of the application, and highly efficient. These available energy harvesting technologies are described, and basic design procedures and components for such systems are identified. This includes three key components namely, the energy harvesting transducer, power management circuit, and energy storage device. Each component of the energy harvesting system is described and important design criteria are highlighted. Specific emphasis is placed on the design of the power management component and the available energy storage device technologies. Disadvantages of using off-the-shelf DC-DC converters and rectifiers are emphasized and possible power management solutions for solar and vibrational energy harvesting are explained. Finally, the chapter concludes by describing the future directions and scope including development of integrated multiple source energy harvesting systems on thin-film substrates.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Alien Technology Corporation, Fluidic Self Assembly Manufacturing Process, http://www.alientechnology.com/products/index.php.
R. Amirtharajah and A. Chandrakasan, “Self-Powered Signal Processing Using Vibration-Based Power Generation”, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits, Vol. 33, No. 5, pp. 687–694, April 2004.
M. A. Assad, “A Real-Time Laboratory Test Bed for Evaluating Localization Performance of Wi-Fi RFID Technologies”, M.S. Thesis, Worchester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA, May 4th, 2007.
Axcess International Inc., “AXCESS Awarded $2 Million Contract for Integrated RFID and Sensor Port Security Solution in Barbados”, Press Release, March 2007.
Axcess International Inc., 2008, http://www.axcessinc.com/products/tags.html.
D. Berndt, “Maintenance-Free Batteries”, 2nd Ed., Research Studies Press Ltd., Taunton, England, 1997.
R. Bridgelall, “UHF Tags – The Answer to The Retail Supply Chain Prayers?,” RF Innovations Magazine, August 1999.
R. Bridgelall, “Bluetooth/802.11 Protocol Adaptation for RFID Tags,” 4th European Wireless Conference, Florence, Italy, February 28th, 2002.
R. Bridgelall, “Enabling Mobile Commerce Through Pervasive Communications with Ubiquitous RF Tags”, IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference, pp. 2041–2046, New Orleans, LA, March 2003.
R. Bridgelall, “Introducing a Micro-Wireless Architecture for Business Activity Sensing”, IEEE RFID Conference (to appear), Las Vegas, NV, April 2008.
A. Burke, “Ultracapacitors: Why, How, and Where is the Technology”, Journal of Power Sources, Vol. 91, pp. 37–50, 2000.
A. Chandrakasan, R. Amirtharajah, R. Goodman, and W. Rabiner, “Trends in Low Power Digital Signal Processing”, 1998 International Symposium on Circuits and Systems, pp. 604–607, 1998.
T. Chi-ying, S. Hui, K. Wing-Hung, and S. Feng, “Ultra-low Voltage Power Management and Computation Methodology for Energy Harvesting Applications”, Symposium on VLSI Circuits, pp. 316–319, June 2005.
Crossbow Technologies, http://www.xbow.com/Home/HomePage.aspx, 2008.
Cymbet Corporation, EnerChip products, http://www.cymbet.com/content/products.asp.
“Dot$\texttrademark$”, Axcess International Inc., http://www.axcessinc.com/products/dot.html, 2008.
EPCglobal Inc., “EPC$\texttrademark$ Radio-Frequency Identification Protocols Class-1 Generation-2 UHF RFID Protocol for Communications at 860 MHz – 960 MHz,” Specification version 1.1.0, December 17th, 2005.
H. Fang, J. Liu, Z. Xu, L. Dong, L. Wong, D. Chen, B. Cai, and Y. Liu, “Fabrication and Performance of MEMS-based Piezoelectric Power Generator for Vibration Energy Harvesting”, Microelectronics Journal, Vol. 37, No. 11, pp. 1280–1284, 2006.
B. Gates, “The Disappearing Computer”, The Economist, Special Issue: The World in 2003, pp. 99, December 2002.
P. Glynne-Jones, S. Beeby, E. James, and N. White, “The Modelling of a Piezoelectric Vibration Powered Generator for Microsystems”, Transducers 01/Eurosensors XV, June 2001.
P. Glynne-Jones, S. P. Beeby, and N. M. White, “Towards a Piezoelectric Vibration-Powered Microgenerator”, IEEE Science Measurement and Technology, Vol. 148, pp. 68–72, March 2001.
S. Guo and H. Lee, “An Efficiency-Enhanced Integrated CMOS Rectifier with Comparator-Controlled Switches for Transcutaneous Powered Implants”, 2007 IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference, San Jose, CA, September 2007.
J. Han, A. Von Jouanne, T. Le, K. Mayaram, and T. Fiez, “Novel Power Conditioning Circuits for Piezoelectric Micro Power Generators”, 19th IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference, pp. 1541–1546, 2004.
A. Hande, “Energy Harvesting for Mobile and Wireless Electronics”, IEEE Dallas Section Meeting, April 2007.
A. Hande, T. Polk, W. Walker, and D. Bhatia, “Indoor Solar Energy Harvesting for Sensor Network Router Nodes”, accepted for publication, Journal of Microprocessors and Microsystems – Special Issue on Sensor Systems, December 2006.
A. Hande, A. Rajasekaran, R. Bridgelall, P. Shah, and S. Priya, “High Efficiency Vibrational Energy Harvester for Active RFID Tags”, Second Annual nanoPower Forum (to appear), Irvine, CA, June 2–4 2008.
Hitachi, “Hitachi Unveils Smallest RFID Chip”, RFiD Journal, March 2003.
M. Holt, “Does Asset Tracking Live Up To The Hype?”, Health IT World News, March 20th,2007.
IEEE Std. 802.11; Specification is a bases for Wi-Fi™.
IEEE Std. 802.15.4; Specification is a bases for ZigBee.
IEEE Std. 802.15.1-2002; Specification is a bases for Bluetooth.
Infinite Power Solutions, http://www.infinitepowersolutions.com/
ISO 18000-7, “Parameters for Active Air Interface Communications at 433 MHz”, 2004.
A. Joseph and M. Srivastava, “Energy Harvesting Projects”, IEEE Pervasive Computing, Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 69–71, January–March, 2005.
A. Kansal, D. Potter, and M. Srivastava, “Performance Aware Tasking for Environmentally Powered Sensor Networks”, ACM International Conference on Measurement and Modeling of Computer Systems, pp. 223–234, 2004.
H. Kim, S. Priya, H. Stephanou, and K. Uchino, “Consideration of Impedance Matching Techniques for Efficient Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting”, IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control, Vol. 54, No. 9, pp. 1851–1859, September 2007.
Konarka Technologies Inc., http://www.konarka.com/
J. Krause, “Antennas”, McGraw-Hill, New York, NY, 1950.
J. Krikke, “Sunrise for Energy Harvesting Projects”, IEEE Pervasive Computing, Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 4–5, January–March, 2005.
J. Kymissis, C. Kendall, J. Paradiso, and N. Gerhenfeld, “Parasitic Power Harvesting in Shoes”, 2nd International Symposium Wearable Computing Conference, pp. 132–139, Pittsburgh, PA, Oct. 19–20, 1998.
E. Lefeuvre, D. Audigier, C. Richard, and D. Guyomar, “Buck-Boost Converter for Sensorless Power Optimization of Piezoelectric Energy Harvester”, IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, Vol. 22, No. 5, September 2007.
K. S. Leong, M. L. Ng, P. H. Cole, “Positioning Analysis of Multiple Antennas in Dense RFID Reader Environment”, Applications and the Internet Workshops, January 23rd,2006.
D. Linden, “Handbook of Batteries and Fuel Cells”, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1984.
S. Meninger, J. Mur-Miranda, R. Amirtharajah, A. Chandrakasan, and J. Lang, “Vibration-to-Electric-Energy Conversion”, IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems, Vol. 9, No. 1, pp. 64–75, February 2001.
S. Meninger, et al., “Vibration-to-electric Energy Conversion”, ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Low Power Electronics and Design, pp. 48–53, 1999.
Mide Technology Corp., “Quickpack Piezoelectric Actuator”, http://www.mide.com/products/qp/qp_catalog.php, 2008.
R. Min, M. Bhardwaj, S. Cho, N. Ickes, E. Shih, A. Sinha, A. Wang, and A. Chandrakasan, “Energy-Centric Enabling Technologies for Wireless Sensor Networks”, IEEE Wireless Communications, Vol. 9, No. 4, pp. 28–39, August 2002.
R. Min, et al., “An Architecture for a Power-Aware Distributed Microsensor Node”, IEEE Workshop on Signal Processing Systems, pp. 581–590, 2000.
Nanosolar Inc., http://www.nanosolar.com/
G. Ottman, H. Hofmann, A. Bhatt, and G. Lesieutre, “Adaptive Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting Circuit for Wireless Remote Power Supply”, IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, Vol. 17, No. 5, pp. 669–676, September 2002.
G. Ottman, H. Hofmann, and G. Lesieutre, “Optimized Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting Circuit Using Step-Down Converter in Discontinuous Conduction Mode”, IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, Vol. 18, No. 2, pp. 696–703, March 2003.
Panasonic Corporation, “Panasonic Solar Cells Technical Handbook”, http://www.solarbotics.net/library/datasheets/sunceram.pdf, 1998.
J. Paradiso and T. Starner, “Energy Scavenging for Mobile and Wireless Electronics”, IEEE Pervasive Computing, Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 18–27, January–March, 2005.
M. Pedram and J. Rabaey, “Power Aware Design Methodologies”, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston, MA, 2002.
PowerFilm Inc., http://www.powerfilmsolar.com/
J. Rabaey, M. Ammer, J. da Silva, D. Patel, and S. Roundy, “PicoRadio Supports Ad Hoc Ultra-Low Power Wireless Networking”, IEEE Computer, Vol. 33, No. 7, pp. 42–48, July 2000.
J. Rabaey, M. Ammer, T. Karalar, S. Li, B. Otis, M. Sheets, and T. Tuan, “PicoRadios for Wireless Sensor Networks: The Next Challenge in Ultra-Low-Power Design”, International Solid-State Circuits Conference, San Francisco, CA, February 2002.
V. Raghunathan, A. Kansal, J. Hsu, J. Friedman, and M. Srivastava, “Design Considerations for Solar Energy Harvesting Wireless Embedded Systems”, Fourth International Symposium on Information Processing in Sensor Networks, pp. 457–462, April 2005.
V. Raghunathan, C. Schurgers, S. Park, and M. Srivastava, “Energy Aware Wireless Microsensor Networks”, IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, Vol. 19, No. 2, pp. 40–50, March 2002.
M. Rahimi, H. Shah, G. Sukhatme, J. Heideman, and D. Estrin, “Studying the Feasibility of Energy Scavenging in a Mobile Sensor Network”, IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, pp. 19–24, 2003.
J.F. Randall and J. Jacot, “The Performance and Modelling of 8 Photovoltaic Materials Under Variable Light Intensity and Spectra”, World Renewable Energy Conference VII, Cologne, Germany, 2002.
S. Roundy, P. Wright, and J. Rabaey, “A Study of Low Level Vibrations as a Power Source for Wireless Sensor Nodes”, Journal of Computer Communications, Vol. 26, pp. 1131–1144, July 2003.
S. Roundy, P. Wright, and J. Rabaey, “Energy Scavenging for Wireless Sensor Networks with Special Focus on Vibrations”, ISBN 1-4020-7663-0, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, 2004.
S. Roundy and P. K. Wright, “A Piezoelectric Vibration Based Generator for Wireless Electronics”, Smart Materials and Structures, Vol. 13, pp. 1131–1142, 2004.
S. Roundy, P. K. Wright, and K. S. J. Pister, “Micro-Electrostatic Vibration-to-Electricity Converters”, ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress & Exposition IMECE2002, November 2002.
H. Schmidhuber and C. Hebling, “First Experiences and Measurements with a Solar Powered Personal Digital Assistant (PDA)”, 17th European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference,pp. 658–662, ETA-Florence and WIP-Munich, 2001.
R. C. Shah and J. M. Rabaey, “Energy Aware Routing for Low Energy Ad Hoc Sensor Networks”, IEEE Wireless Comm. and Networking Conference, pp. 350–355, 2002.
C. Shearwood and R. Yates, “Development of an Electromagnetic Micro-generator”, Electronics Letters, Vol. 33, No. 22, pp. 1883–1884, October 1997.
N. Shenck and J. A. Paradiso, “Energy Scavenging with Shoe-mounted Piezoelectrics”, IEEE Micro, Vol. 21, pp. 30–42, May–June 2001.
X. Shengwen, K. Ngo, T. Nishida, C. Gyo-Bum, and A. Sharma, “Converter and Controller for Micro-power Energy Harvesting”, 20th Annual IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition, pp. 226–230, March 2005.
M. Skolnik, “Introduction to RADAR Systems”, MMcGraw-Hill, New York, NY, 1980.
P. Smalser, “Power Transfer of Piezoelectric Generated Energy”, U.S. Patent, 5 703 474, 1997.
A. A. Smith Jr., “Radio Frequency Principles and Applications”, IEEE Press, New York, 1998.
R. Sood, “Piezoelectric Micro Power Generator: A MEMS-base Energy Scavenger”, M.S. Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, September 2003.
T. Starner, “Human-powered Wearable Computing” IBM Systems Journal, Vol. 35. No. 3–4, 1996.
T. Starner, “Powerful Change Part 1: Batteries and Possible Alternatives for the Mobile Market”, IEEE Pervasive Computing Mobile and Ubiquitous Systems, Vol. 2, No. 4, pp. 86–88, October 2003.
T. Starner and J.A. Paradiso, “Human-Generated Power for Mobile Electronics”, Low-Power Electronics Design, C. Piguet, ed., Chapter 45, pp. 1–35, CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL, 2004.
J. Stevens, “Optimized Thermal Design of Small △ T Thermoelectric Generators”, 34th Intersociety Energy Conversion Engineering Conference, paper 1999-01-2564, Society of Automotive Engineers, 1999.
TI EZ430-RF2500, http://focus.ti.com/docs/toolsw/folders/print/ez430-rf2500.html, 2008.
United States Government Accountability Office (GAO), US Border Security US-VISIT, Report No. 07–248, December 2006.
US Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), Title 47, Chapter 1, Part 15: Radio-frequency devices, U.S. Federal Communications Commission.
US Patent #6034603, “Radio Tag System and Method with Improved Tag Interference Avoidance,” March 7th, 2000.
US Patent #7005985, “Radio Frequency Identification System and Method”, February 28th, 2006.
T. Voigt, H. Ritter, and J. Schiller, “Utilizing Solar Power in Wireless Sensor Networks”, IEEE Conference on Local Computer Networks, 2003.
R. Xia, C. Farm, W. Choi, and S. Kim, “Self-Powered Wireless Sensor System using MEMS Piezoelectric Micro Power Generator”, IEEE Sensors Conference, October 2006.
E. Yeatman, “Advances in Power Sources for Wireless Sensor Nodes”, International Workshop Wearable and Implantable Body Sensor Networks, pp. 20–21, Imperial College, 2004, http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/vip/bsn_2004/program/index.html
“Zero Threshold MOSFETs”, Advanced Linear Devices Inc., http://www.aldinc.com/ald_przerothreshold.htm, 2008.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2009 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Hande, A., Bridgelall, R., Bhatia, D. (2009). Energy Harvesting for Active RF Sensors and ID Tags. In: Priya, S., Inman, D.J. (eds) Energy Harvesting Technologies. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-76464-1_18
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-76464-1_18
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-0-387-76463-4
Online ISBN: 978-0-387-76464-1
eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)