Design methodology for PicoRadio networks
Proceedings of the conference on Design, automation and test in Europe
Perpetual environmentally powered sensor networks
IPSN '05 Proceedings of the 4th international symposium on Information processing in sensor networks
A fuel-cell-battery hybrid for portable embedded systems
ACM Transactions on Design Automation of Electronic Systems (TODAES)
An efficient solar energy harvester for wireless sensor nodes
Proceedings of the conference on Design, automation and test in Europe
Sun, wind and water flow as energy supply for small stationary data acquisition platforms
Computers and Electronics in Agriculture
A prototype low-cost wakeup radio for the 868 MHz band
International Journal of Sensor Networks
Modular plug-and-play power resources for energy-aware wireless sensor nodes
SECON'09 Proceedings of the 6th Annual IEEE communications society conference on Sensor, Mesh and Ad Hoc Communications and Networks
A survey of multi-source energy harvesting systems
Proceedings of the Conference on Design, Automation and Test in Europe
Heterogeneous multi-harvester for wireless sensor networks
Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Energy Neutral Sensing Systems
Ultra low power asynchronous MAC protocol using wake-up radio for energy neutral WSN
Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Energy Neutral Sensing Systems
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This paper presents the design, implementation and characterization of an energy--efficient smart power unit for a wireless sensor network with a versatile nano-Watt wake up radio receiver. A novel Smart Power Unit has been developed featuring multi-source energy harvesting, multi-storage adaptive recharging, electrochemical fuel cell integration, radio wake-up capability and embedded intelligence. An ultra low power on board microcontroller performs maximum power point tracking (MPPT) and optimized charging of supercapacitor or Li-Ion battery at the maximum efficiency. The power unit can communicate with the supplied node via serial interface (I2C or SPI) to provide status of resources or dynamically adapt its operational parameters. The architecture is very flexible: it can host different types of harvesters (solar, wind, vibration, etc.). Also, it can be configured and controlled by using the wake-up radio to enable the design of very efficient power management techniques on the power unit or on the supplied node. Experimental results on the developed prototype demonstrate ultra-low power consumption of the power unit using the wake-up radio. In addition, the power transfer efficiency of the multi-harvester and fuel cell matches the state-of-the-art for Wireless Sensor Networks.