Instrumentation and Measurement Systems: The Challenge of Designing Energy Harvesting Sensor Systems

With the advent of low-cost and low-power computation, communication and sensor devices, novel instrumentation and measurement applications have been enabled, such as real-time industrial condition monitoring and fine-grained environmental monitoring. In these application scenarios, a lack of available infrastructures for communication and power supply is a common problem. In industrial applications, for example, the machine to be monitored and the monitoring system itself have significantly different technology lifespans, which requires that the monitoring system be retrofitted to machines that are already in use. In environmental monitoring, measurement systems are deployed as standalone devices in potentially remote areas. Consequently, the more autonomous the sensor system can be in terms of required infrastructure, the better it can match application and business needs.