- EnABLES Project Ref No
- 033
- User
- Marc Braun
- Affiliation
- TX Logistik Austria GmbH, Schwechat, Austria
- Description
- Nowadays, GPS trackers for railway applications are powered by batteries. Some companies offer first vibration harvesters to power such trackers during operation to get rid of batteries or to prolong operation times.
In a previous Enables TA project the general approach of using energy harvesting from vibrations for powering GPS trackers on railway trains was investigated. Vibrations on trains were recorded and analysed and commercial vibration harvesters were characterized in the lab.
In this project, a selected vibration harvester will be integrated onto GPS trackers to cover at least parts of the power consumption and extend the operation time of the battery. The GPS tracker with the vibration harvester will be mounted on a train to record the output power and to investigate under which condition a self-powered operation of the GPS tracker is possible. The project is intended to prove the functionality of the selected harvester and tracker for railway applications and pave the way for commercial use-cases.Access provided: Remote access to vibration energy harvesting design and characterisation at Fraunhofer-IIS.
- EnABLES Project Ref No
- 031
- User
- Manuel Lozano
- Affiliation
- IMB-CNM (CSIC), Barcelona Microelectronics Inst. – National Microelectronics Centre – CSIC, Barcelona, Spain
- Description
- A miniature low power sensor containing an accelerometer to sense the stress levels of farmed fish by analysing their respiratory characteristics has been developed under the Horizon 2020 project AQUAEXCEL 2020 (DOI:10.3389/fphys.2019.0066).
The next step is to move towards a commercially scalable version of the prototype developed. This requires innovative powering techniques and methodologies to enable long battery life in a very small form factor. The challenging aspect being that energy storage in very small form factors is difficult to achieve and therefore energy harvesting techniques, as well as ultra low power design methods, are required.Access provided: Access to system integration design and evaluation at Tyndall, including visit to facility.
- EnABLES Project Ref No
- 023
- User
- Dhiman Mallick
- Affiliation
- Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi, India
- Description
- We aim to study the effectiveness of micro-patterned structures and the magnetic properties of CoPt permanent magnetic films, electrodeposited using optimized deposition conditions, for MEMS-scale vibrational energy harvesting applications. The difficulty in miniaturization and integration of the high-performance permanent magnets in MEMS scale devices hinders the continuous demand of increasing power density. In general, CMOS compatible development of high energy product (BHmax) permanent magnets with thickness of the order of microns to hundreds of microns is a key challenge. A detailed study of micro-structural evolution and magnetic properties of optimally electrodeposited CoPt magnets with varying thicknesses will be performed. Electro-magnetic characterisation will also be performed at varying temperatures by SQUID magnetometer in order to study the magnetic domain switching behaviour.
Access provided: Remote access to Electromagnetic Energy Harvesting modelling, fabrication and characterisation at Tyndall.
- EnABLES Project Ref No
- 022
- User
- Sven Gisler
- Affiliation
- Datwyler Sealing Solutions, Schattdorf, Switzerland
- Description
- Datwyler Sealing Solutions develops and produces elastomer products in automotive, healthcare general industry and consumer goods. It is an international company with headquarters in Switzerland.
There is currently strong emphasis on predictive maintenance, continuous monitoring of sensible rubber parts, etc. Especially for valves and seals in critical applications monitoring of elastomer is of interest. First approaches reported in the state-of-the-art uses indirect methods using optical or pressure sensors outside the elastomer. It is to be expected that much higher quality information can be obtained by means of sensors embedded into the elastomer. Due to the requirements of this novel approach wireless and miniaturized sensor solutions are needed. To power these sensors RF-Harvesting is a promising technology.Access provided: Remote access to RF Energy Harvesting design and characterisation at Fraunhofer-IMS.
- EnABLES Project Ref No
- 021
- User
- Pierre-Yves Pichon
- Affiliation
- RGS Development BV, Broek op Langedijk, The Netherlands
- Description
- Current SiGe materials used in our thermoelectric modules are made using the RGS proprietary crystal growth process, which allows materials of controlled composition to be produced at industrial scale. Although the stability of the Thermagy technology is demonstrated, the relatively high costs of Ge limits the range of application of the modules to specific applications.
The objective of this research is to improve the thermoelectric performance of the materials and to allow reducing the germanium concentration. Both effects will have a positive impact on the module costs and will allow widening the market for our Thermagy modules.Access provided: Access to thermoelectric energy harvesting technology at CEA-Liten, including visit to facility.
- EnABLES Project Ref No
- 018
- User
- Marleen Boonen
- Affiliation
- Methods2Business D.O.O., Novi Sad, Serbia
- Description
- Over 30 billion smart devices are expected to be interconnected by 2020. More than 50% of the internet traffic traverses Wi-Fi networks. There are now already more Wi-Fi devices in use than there are people on earth, and there are three billion new Wi-Fi devices every year. The Internet of Things brings even another level of connectivity and automation to the world aiming to connect anything anytime and anywhere. Many sensors need to run for years on a small coin cell or harvester. This requires next generation wireless devices, extremely low power and energy efficient; e.g. they can go in deep sleep modes without loosing connection. Existing Wi-Fi (2.4 – 6GHz) is too power hungry and has other major drawbacks for IoT like a poor signal penetration and poor range.
We will integrate our long-range, ultra-low power (ULP) and secure WiFi for IoT with imec’s ultra-low power wireless radio frontends. The main objective of this project is to demonstrate how this integrated system can operate as a ultra-low power solution suitable for energy harvesting.Access provided: Access to system IoT building blocks at imec-NL, including visit to facility.
- EnABLES Project Ref No
- 012
- User
- Marc Braun
- Affiliation
- TX Logistik Austria GmbH, Schwechat, Austria
- Description
- GPS trackers for railway application are nowadays powered by batteries. Some companies offer first vibration harvester to power such trackers during operation to get rid of batteries or to prolong operation times.
The goal of the project is to investigate energy harvesting power supplies for GPS trackers on railway trains. A GPS tracker sample will be used in a field test to evaluate the power consumption of a specific railway use-case and to characterize the typical vibration in this environment. The power output from off-the-shelf vibration harvesters will be characterized with the vibrations from the field tests. Further lab testing will prove the performance of the vibration harvesters and an appropriate energy management system to power the tracker in the specific use-case.Access provided: Remote access to vibration energy harvesting design and characterisation at Fraunhofer-IIS.
- EnABLES Project Ref No
- 010
- User
- François Stas
- Affiliation
- E-peas S.A., Mont-Saint-Guibert, Belgium
- Description
- We would like to use different vibration harvesters with our commercial DC/DC converter IC. Since most available vibration harvesters differ strongly regarding output characteristic, there are no high efficient power management ICs optimized for vibration harvesters on the market. Available solutions do not consider the individual characteristics of the harvesters and thus do not provide the maximum power output. The goal of the project is to provide an optimized rectifier circuit as an interface to a commercial DC/DC converter for a special type of harvester and operation frequency.
Matching techniques will be evaluated to investigate the potential for customization for other harvesters and automatic matching like maximum power point tracking.Access provided: Access to vibration energy harvesting design and characterisation at Fraunhofer-IIS, including visit to facility.
- EnABLES Project Ref No
- 009
- User
- Christopher Juliano
- Affiliation
- Nowi B.V., Delft, The Netherlands
- Description
- We are seeking technical cooperation with Fraunhofer-IMS in the further development of our advanced low power PMIC using the latest advances in our PMIC design. As a small company we could greatly benefit in gaining access to testing facilities and technical equipment, personnel, and testing methodologies that have been undertaken at Fraunhofer, specifically in the area of photo-voltaic research.
Access provided: Access to photo-voltaic (PV) energy harvesting at Fraunhofer-IMS, including visit to facility.
- EnABLES Project Ref No
- 006
- User
- Johannes Hainzl
- Affiliation
- Baudat, Leibnitz, Austria
- Description
- We are working on a tracking system for animals which should be powered by energy harvesting. The aim of this project is to use the Fraunhofer IIS hardware platform to tests available animal tracking signal processing software modules and evaluate if they can be powered by energy harvesting. We will transfer our signal processing algorithms onto a tracking system to evaluate their power consumption and evaluate the optimization potential. Furthermore, we want to find out if it is possible to power a tracking system by solar power or an alternative harvesting technology.
We will install the Fraunhofer-IIS hardware platform with their signal processing on animals and to characterise the power consumption of the system in different use-cases and operation modes. We will use the recommendations from the study to optimise the software algorithms and to choose appropriate energy harvesting technologies.Access provided: Remote access to energy harvesting design and recording at Fraunhofer-IIS.
- EnABLES Project Ref No
- 005
- User
- Denis Pasero
- Affiliation
- Ilika Technologies Ltd., Southampton, United Kingdom
- Description
- The goal of this work is to benchmark Ilika and CEA-Leti microbattery technologies specially designed to develop small dimensions stack batteries to meet market-leading energy density values.
CEA Leti will use their materials and processes to realize the stacked components.
The complete set of experiments will thus provide the data expected by Ilika for benchmarking Ilika and CEA microbattery technologies.Access provided: Remote access to microbatteries technology and facilities at CEA-Leti.