Acceleration-waveform-sending wireless sensor node powered by piezoelectric vibration energy harvester

Abstract

We have developed a wireless sensor node (WSN) powered by a piezoelectric vibration energy harvester that enables transmission of three-axis acceleration waveform data. Unlike a conventional WSN, which sends a single point representing the root mean square acceleration value, the proposed WSN allows the frequency, vibrational modes, and displacement of the target structure to be obtained. Therefore, this waveform-sending scenario is highly suitable for structural health monitoring applications. We used a power gating technique to reduce the standby energy consumption significantly and thus realize the waveform-sending concept. The overall dimensions and mass of the WSN are 3×3×3 cm3 and 26 g, respectively. The overall dimensions of the harvester are 5.6×2×2.1 cm3. The WSN measures the threeaxis acceleration of the structure’s vibration for 1.2 s at a sampling rate of 3,200 samples every 5 min, transmits the data, and then goes into standby mode. Because of the power gating technique, the energy consumption per cycle is as low as 108 mJ. We evaluated the WSN under both harmonic and random vibration conditions. For harmonic vibrations, the acceleration magnitude applied using a shaker was 1 m/s2 at the harvester’s resonance. For random vibrations, a power spectral density (PSD) of 0.1 (m/s2)2/Hz and a frequency range of 10–100 Hz were set. The WSN operated successfully using only energy generated by the harvester and the transmitted waveforms matched the waveforms measured by a high-precision acceleration pick-up. Here, we report the WSN design methodology and the detailed charging characteristics of the energy storage capacitor.