Electronics 2018, 7(6), 95; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics7060095
Practical Energy Harvesting for Batteryless Ambient Backscatter Sensors
1
School of ECE, Technical University of Crete, 731 00 Chania, Greece
2
Department of Electrical Engineering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 541 24 Thessaloniki, Greece
3
Department of Physics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece and Department of Engineering, University of Nicosia, Nicosia 2417, Cyrpus
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Received: 31 May 2018 / Revised: 8 June 2018 / Accepted: 11 June 2018 / Published: 13 June 2018
(This article belongs to the Special Issue RFID, WPT and Energy Harvesting)
Abstract
This work studies the performance of two methods for providing power to an ultra-low power, ambient backscatter tag, omitting the need for any battery. RF energy harvesting from a dedicated source and energy harvesting from ambient light using a single photodiode are compared. Extensive measurement results from tests conducted under real world conditions are offered for both harvesting methods. It is concluded that for a total cost of under 7 Euros the need for a battery can be eliminated, by using a single photodiode element along with a suitable boost converter. The ultra-low power character of the utilized tag enables the use of multiple harvesting methods and paves the way towards truly battery-less wireless sensor systems. View Full-TextKeywords:
energy harvesting; backscatter; RFID
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Vougioukas, G.; Dimitriou, A.; Bletsas, A.; Sahalos, J. Practical Energy Harvesting for Batteryless Ambient Backscatter Sensors. Electronics 2018, 7, 95.
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