Micro Energy Harvesting from the Soil of Indoor Living Plants

Abstract

In this work, the aim is to propose a study on living plants characterization as an energy source for electricity scavenging to feed low-power devices and autonomous sensors. Nowadays, the widespread of the Internet of Things (loT) and distributed monitoring has led to an increasing demand for autonomous, long-life low-power smart devices. As a consequence, research on alternative energy sources in the surrounding environment, with zero costs and reduced bio impact, is growing. This work demonstrates the feasibility of a plant-based energy harvesting system capable of constantly extracting energy in the order of hundreds of microwatts. The achieved results enable future research works on practical electronic systems to include the energy extraction process from living plants to supply embedded systems for plant monitoring or other similar applications.