MEMS Piezoelectric Energy Harvester Powered Wireless Sensor Module Driven by Noisy Base Excitation

Sijun Du, Yu Jia, Emmanuelle Arroyo, S. Fernandez, S. T. Riches, Ashwin A Seshia

Research output: Chapter in Book/Published conference outputConference publication

Abstract

Despite recent advances in MEMS vibration energy harvesting and ultra-low power wireless sensors, designing a wireless sensor system entirely powered by a single MEMS device under noisy base excitation has remained a challenge. This paper presents a wireless sensor system co-integrated with a single MEMS piezoelectric vibration energy harvester chip excited by band-limited large amplitude noisy vibration characteristic of an automotive application. The use of soft stoppers in the MEMS package enables the harvesters to operate at an excitation level of 10 g(rms). A custom thick AlN (Aluminum Nitride) piezoelectric process is employed to fabricate the MEMS harvesters with a single MEMS chip generating 179 μW rectified power under these excitation conditions. A low-power wireless sensor module and a receiver module were also designed and demonstrated in this work. Experiments show that the wireless sensor module can be powered solely by the MEMS energy harvester commencing from the cold state. Successful wireless data transmission and receival of sensor data packets are recorded under representative conditions.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publication2019 20th International Conference on Solid-State Sensors, Actuators and Microsystems and Eurosensors XXXIII, TRANSDUCERS 2019 and EUROSENSORS XXXIII
PublisherIEEE
Pages350-353
Number of pages4
ISBN (Electronic)9781728120072
ISBN (Print)978-1-5386-8105-3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 22 Aug 2019

Publication series

Name2019 20th International Conference on Solid-State Sensors, Actuators and Microsystems & Eurosensors XXXIII (TRANSDUCERS & EUROSENSORS XXXIII)
PublisherIEEE
ISSN (Print)2167-0013
ISSN (Electronic)2167-0021

Bibliographical note

© 2019 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.

Funding: Innovate UK (Grant number 102152) and the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/N021614/1).

Keywords

  • Energy harvesting
  • MEMS
  • piezoelectric transducers
  • power management
  • rectification
  • soft stoppers
  • wireless sensor networks

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