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Indoor solar energy harvesting for sensor network router nodes
14 Keywords: Wireless sensor networks; Energy harvesting; Energy scavenging; Solar energy; Router nodes 15
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A unique method has been developed to scavenge energy from monocrystaline solar cells to power wireless router nodes used in indoor applications. The systems energy harvesting module consists of solar cells connected in series-parallel combination to scavenge energy from 34W uorescent lights. A set of ultracapacitors were used as the energy storage device. Two router nodes were used as a router pair at each route point to minimize power consumption. Test results show that the harvesting circuit which acted as a plugin to the router nodes manages energy harvesting and storage, and enables near-perpetual, harvesting aware operation of the router node. 2007 Published by Elsevier B.V.
16 1. Introduction 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34
The application spectrum of wireless sensor and actuator networks seems to be growing without bounds. Some of the applications include temperature and light monitoring in remote locations, sensing chemicals in trac congested areas, and measuring tire pressure and monitoring acceleration in automobiles. Each wireless node is intended to be deployed to a remote location to sense critical data and relay its measurements to other network nodes for monitoring and control purposes. Many foresee these embedded system devices in applications ranging from industrial automation to home networking [1,2]. These smart networks represent the next evolutionary development step in building, utilities, industrial, home, shipboard, and transportation systems automation. Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) focused towards indoor industrial and biomedical applications face serious challenges in terms of harvesting nearby natural sources of energy for power. Presently, such network nodes use
* Corresponding authors. Tel.: +1 972 883 6563; fax: +1 972 883 2710 (A. Hande); Tel.: +1 972 883 2386; fax: +1 972 883 2710 (D. Bhatia). E-mail addresses: abhiman.hande@utdallas.edu (A. Hande), dinesh@ utdallas.edu (D. Bhatia).
alkaline batteries as sources of energy. Obviously, these batteries have a xed energy rating and therefore, a limited life. They have to be replaced in due time and this factor plays a major role in determining the life of a wireless sensor node. For example, a Crossbow MICAz mote [3] operating at 1% duty cycle on standard 3000 milli-ampere-hour (mAhr) AA batteries would require battery replacement every 17.35 months [4]. Often, the cost of physically deploying resources to change a nodes worn out battery outweighs the cost of the node itself. The issue of powering these nodes becomes critical when one considers the prohibitive cost of wiring power to them or replacing their batteries. To make matters worse, battery technology has not improved in terms of energy density and size over the last decade, especially for low power applications such as sensor networks [5]. While an eort is being made to improve the energy density of batteries, additional energy resources need to be investigated to increase the life of sensor network nodes. Exploiting renewable energy resources in the devices environment, oers a power source limited by the devices physical survival rather than an adjunct energy source. It is therefore necessary to exploit energy sources ubiquitous to a sensor nodes operating space in order to obtain the possibility of innite lifetime. It is possible to scavenge
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Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science, University of Texas at Dallas, P.O. Box 830688, EC33, Richardson, TX 75083, USA
Abhiman Hande *, Todd Polk, William Walker, Dinesh Bhatia
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0141-9331/$ - see front matter 2007 Published by Elsevier B.V. doi:10.1016/j.micpro.2007.02.006
Please cite this article in press as: A. Hande et al., Indoor solar energy harvesting for sensor network router nodes, Microprocess. Microsyst. (2007), doi:10.1016/j.micpro.2007.02.006
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Table 1 Power densities of energy harvesting technologies Harvesting technology Solar cells (outdoors at noon) Piezoelectric (shoe inserts) Vibration (small microwave oven) Thermoelectric (10 C gradient) Acoustic noise (100 dB)
Fig. 1. Patient remote health monitoring. VijayDevabhaktuni_Wireless_Proceedings.doc).
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energy from several sources, and there has been a concerted eort towards a detailed comparison of energy per unit area available, and cost of the corresponding scavenging schemes [6,7]. Some of the available harvesting technologies include solar cells, piezoelectric vibration generators, and energy from thermal and acoustic noise. Table 1 compares the power generation potential of some of these energy harvesting modalities. Among these sources of energy, solar energy harvesting through photovoltaic conversion and vibrational energy through piezoelectric elements provide relatively higher power densities. This makes them the modalities of choice to power a WSN that consumes power on the order of several mW. However, the design of an ecient energy harvesting module involves complex tradeos due to the interaction of several factors such as the characteristics of the energy sources, chemistry and capacity of the energy storage device(s) used, power supply requirements, and power management features of the embedded system, and application behavior. It is therefore essential to thoroughly understand and judiciously exploit these factors in order to maximize the energy eciency of the harvesting modules. Moreover, the power output from these natural sources is highly nonlinear in nature and depends upon a variety of factors. From Table 1, it is clear that solar energy is the most ecient natural energy source available for sensor networks used for outdoor applications. However, for indoor applications, it is important to note that the eciency of photovoltaic cells is very low. Typically, the light
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intensity under articial lighting conditions found in hospitals and oces is less than 10 W/m2 as compared to 1001000 W/m2 under outdoor conditions. For example, monocrystaline solar cells have an eciency of less than 13% under typical indoor lighting conditions [8]. In spite of such poor eciencies, these cells still have a power density of at least 0.51 mW/cm2 under indoor 15 W/m2 light intensity conditions, which is much higher than their nearest energy scavenging competitor. Although amorphous solar cells have been found to have slightly higher eciencies of 37% under indoor conditions [8], they are much more expensive than their monocrystaline counterparts. This paper therefore focuses on scavenging energy from monocrystaline photovoltaic cells.
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2. WSNs in indoor applications There are several indoor applications that seem feasible for WSNs. But to eliminate their dependence on batteries and use solar cells as an exclusive energy source would require the indoor lights to be on continuously and would therefore, seem to be impractical for a variety of indoor applications. However, indoor WSNs operating on solar power appear to be feasible for industrial and hospital environments where indoor lights are operational at a duty cycle close to 100%. Fig. 1 shows one such concept of an in-hospital WSN that can be used to monitor patient vital sign data from instruments such as electrocardiograms (ECGs) [9], pulse oximeters [10], and blood pressure (BP) monitors [11]. These units can be interfaced to WSN nodes that are programmed as sensor nodes. These sensor nodes are required to perform the function of sensing vital sign data from the patient and are typically required to be ambulatory in nature. Therefore, it is more convenient to allow them to run on stable sources of energy such as batteries. The maximum range of data transmission for such nodes is
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A simplied block diagram of a wireless router node operating on solar energy is shown in Fig. 2. Typically, a router node consists of an eight-bit microcontroller with adequate resources to operate its kernel [12]. The microcontroller manages power to the sensors and data acquisition elements, as well as responds to commands from the base-station. Crossbow MICAz motes were used as the router nodes of the system. Each MICAz mote uses the Chipcon CC2420, IEEE 802.15.4 compliant, Zigbee ready radio frequency transceiver [13] integrated with an eight-
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approximately ten meters [4]. Thus, additional nodes may be required to pass the data back to the central monitoring location. There might be several such router nodes distributed in these WSNs, and their density and number would depend on the hospital size and coverage requirements. Typically, each router node in the network has a xed location and its only function involves establishing itself in the network and enabling prompt data transfer to the nearest router node or base-station. These router nodes obviously need to be continuously on so that data can be promptly transferred. Since hospitals have uorescent lights in the hallways that are always on, it is advantageous to operate these router nodes by scavenging light energy. This would result in a huge cost savings over time (this arrangement eliminates the need to monitor and replace batteries). Referring to Fig. 1, the base-station in such networks consists of a mote that receives data and is connected to a server. The data received by the base-station is displayed to allow constant patient monitoring and can be routed to the patients physician for easy access in real-time. Similarly, WSN router nodes in industrial plants and corporate oces can scavenge energy through overhead uorescent lights rather than use batteries. In fact, in such systems, sensor nodes might not be mobile and therefore, it might be possible and advantageous to power the sensor nodes (in addition to router nodes) through photovoltaic solar cells.
Solar cells have vastly diering characteristics from batteries. As mentioned in Section 1, there are several kinds of photovoltaic cells available and all of them are relatively inecient under indoor light conditions [8]. Since amorphous cells are much more expensive than their monocrystaline counterparts, it was decided to use monocrystaline cells as the source of natural energy. 3.7500 2.500 , 4-4.0-100 monocrystaline solar panels from Solar World Inc. [16] were chosen for the system due to ease of availability and low cost. Each panel was rated at 100 mA short circuit current (ISC) and 4 VDC open circuit voltage (VOC) under 1 sun (1000 W/m2) conditions. In order to determine the number of panels required per router node, a simple load test was conducted. A single 4-4.0100 Solar World panel was connected across a varying load to determine its VI prole. The panel was placed at a 1 cm distance from overhead 34 W Phillips uorescent F34CW/ RS/EW lights. These lights are representative of those used in indoor oce and hospital environments. Fig. 3 shows the VI prole wherein it can be observed that at around 3.2 VDC the panel sourced out approximately 2 mA. A Crossbow MICAz node when active will draw a minimum of 25 mA under full load condition at 3 VDC [4]. Therefore,
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bit ATMega 128L microcontroller [14]. The system communicates in the 2.4 GHz frequency band. Several key issues were addressed before embarking upon designing the indoor solar energy scavenging prototype circuit. Firstly, solar energy has to be harvested by an ecient energy scavenging system, and secondly, there has to be an ecient means of storing this harvested energy [15]. The system must also eectively deliver the stored energy to the router node. This means there has to be an intelligent power management strategy in place. Obviously, this strategy must not be power hungry and should serve to lengthen the life of the energy storage devices. These details along with design considerations that impact eciency and the associated tradeos are explained in the next few sections.
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A/D converter
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Fig. 2. Block diagram of a solar energy harvesting wireless router node.
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panel conguration. In addition, low power Maxwell PC55, 5 VDC, 2F ultracapacitors [17] were used in parallel with the solar panels to store the harvested energy and to reduce the solar panel power rating requirement even further. These details are explained in the next few sections. 3.2. Network protocol
Optimal power point
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at least twelve panels were required per router node. Although the size of the panels was not a concern, a modularized approach (described in the following section) was taken in order to reduce the panel size further. It was decided to use two router nodes with 50% duty cycle as a router pair rather than using a single router node that is always on. This would obviously add some cost to the system due to the addition of an extra router node per router pair, however, it reduces the size of each router nodes solar
A multi-hop mesh network was designed for the system. The network architecture consists of several router pairs that provide paths for sensor nodes to send data to or receive data from the base-station. This strategy helped minimize the size of solar panels required by each router node. Fig. 4 shows the conceptual diagram of the network. The gure shows four router pairs each comprised of their own router nodes R1 and R2. A special dual router (DR) algorithm was used to control the operation of R1 and R2. Here, at any point in time either R1 or R2 would be on but not both. This indicates a 50% duty cycle for both R1 and R2 at every router pair and therefore, a reduced solar panel size per router node. In Fig. 4, sensor nodes S1, S2, and S3 use router pairs 1 and 2, and sensor nodes S4, S5, and S6 use router pairs 3 and 4 to transmit their sensor measurements to the base-station. Fig. 5 shows the owchart for both R1 and R2. At startup, several key parameters of the router node are initialized
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Fig. 5. Router node owchart.
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to appropriate values before commencing the DR algorithm. This includes initialization of the router node microcontroller and transceiver. After the initialization process is completed, the router node tries to nd an established network. It continues transmitting connection requests until it receives a response from at least one other node. It will then choose a node that is closest to the base-station (i.e., shortest path or minimum hop count). The base-station comprises of another MICAz mote and could be either one hop away from the new router node or multiple hops away. The new node will then request a network ID. This request is forwarded to the base-station, which responds to the router nodes request and assigns it a network ID. The newly IDed router node next checks for its nearest route partner. For example, referring to Fig. 4, in every router pair, after R1 and R2 receive their respective IDs from the base-station, they try locating and nding each other, leading to eventual collaboration and the formation of a router pair. The router pair is then fully functioning
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and begins its operation at 50% duty cycle. Fig. 4 indicates four such router pairs each with their own respective R1 and R2 router nodes. If for some reason a router node is unable to communicate with its partner, it will rst attempt to reconnect to that partner node. If it is unsuccessful, it will attempt to nd a new partner. After locating its corresponding partner, each router node and its partner use a DR algorithm to facilitate a 50% duty cycle. Initially, R1 forces R2 to enter a sleep mode. Here, R2s microcontroller and transceiver are forced into a low power mode in order to minimize power consumption (on the order of tens of lW). An asynchronous timer is used to set the sleep time. After the prescribed sleep interval is completed, the timer generates an interrupt that causes R2 to wake up. The wake up routine transmits a sleep packet to R1 ordering it to enter a similar sleep state. Now, R1 enters its sleep mode and R2 remains awake. After R1s sleep interval is completed, its asynchronous timer generates an interrupt causing it to wake up and send a sleep packet to R2 forcing it to sleep again. This on-o cycle continues for R1 and R2 at every router pair so that at any point in time either R1 or R2 is always available to route a potential packet emanating from a sensor node towards the base-station or vice-versa. The DR algorithm for R1 and R2, therefore, sits in an innite loop collaborating with its route partner to execute a 50% duty cycle. Therefore, any one router node in a router pair is always awake and is ready to route a packet from a router pair at a higher hop count (or its own aliated sensor node) towards the base-station via other router pairs that have a lower hop count or vice-versa. The on-o time period for R1 and R2 does depend on the energy storage and scavenging mechanism. Fig. 6 shows the owchart of a typical sensor node in the network. The initial start-up routine is fairly similar to the router nodes. A sensor node aliates itself with the closest router pair to the base-station. For example, Fig. 4 shows three sensor nodes vice-versa. S1, S2, and S3 that are associated with router pair 2. Here, sensor readings from any of these sensor nodes are transferred to the base-station via router pairs 1 and 2. Similarly, sensor nodes vice-versa. S4, S5, and S6 use router pairs 3 and 4 to communicate with the base-station. Depending upon the application, sensor readings are transmitted at prescribed intervals. After transmitting the packet, the sensor node enters a low power sleep state to minimize power consumption. Once again, the microcontrollers asynchronous timer is used to execute the sleep operation. Obviously, since the sensor nodes used in indoor networks (such as the example described in Section 2) will not have a xed location, it is impractical to implement a solar energy harvesting system for these nodes. However, other schemes such as piezoelectric vibration generators and thermal energy scavenging systems can possibly be used for energy harvesting purposes. These schemes will be explored in our future work. In the present system, alkaline batteries were used to power the sensor nodes.
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Fig. 6. Sensor node owchart.
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An energy harvesting scheme similar to Fig. 7 was used for the router nodes. It consists of an adequate number of solar panels to charge the energy storage devices which in turn output regulated power to the router node. More often than not, this strategy works well for outdoor environments where adequate solar energy is available during the day to charge the energy storage devices. However, as described in Sections 2 and 3, in many indoor applications, solar energy scavenging from overhead 34 W uorescent lights is fairly practical. This strategy was utilized to obtain power for the router nodes. From Fig. 7, the core of the energy harvesting module is the power management circuit, which draws power from the solar panels and manages energy storage and power routing to the router node. The most important consideration in the design of this
circuit is to maximize energy eciency, enhance device reliability, and lengthen the life of the router node. The power management circuit designed for this system provides regulated power to the router node and also simultaneously stores energy in ultracapacitors. Fig. 8 shows the simplied schematic of the actual energy harvesting circuit with alkaline batteries used as back-up power. An adequate number of solar panels (S) were used to support charging of the ultracapacitor bank (C). Initial tests were conducted wherein a power supply was used to simulate the solar panel bank to determine the number of panels required. The ultracapacitor bank comprised of two Maxwell PC5-5 ultracapacitors. As mentioned in Section 3, solar panels have an optimal operating point that provides maximum power output. The ultracapacitors ensure operation at about this power point by clamping the output terminals of the solar panel to approximately 3 VDC. During normal router node operation, energy from both the ultracapacitor and solar panel bank is used. When the router node is on, energy is drawn from both power sources almost equally and when the node enters its sleep state, it draws minimum power from both sources. During the sleep state, the solar panel bank charges the ultracapacitors back to about 3 VDC. The voltage ripple due to capacitor charge and discharge during the on-o cycles was found to be minimal and therefore, was not a cause of concern. A 3.6 VDC zener clamping diode was used to protect the router node from excessively high voltages. Two p-channel MOSFETS (Q1 and Q2) were used as switches to allow the use of alkaline batteries for emergency back-up power. PC0 and PC3 (Port C of the microcontroller) were used to control the operation of Q1 and Q2, respectively. During normal router node operation, PC0 = 0 and PC3 = 1 so that Q1 is on and Q2 is o. This facilitates router node operation by drawing power from the solar panels and ultracapacitor bank. During adverse conditions when energy is not available from the solar panel bank, PC0 = 1 and PC3 = 0 so that Q1 is o and Q2 is on. Now, energy from the back-up battery is used to power the router node. ADC3 (Port F of the microcontroller) was used to continuously monitor the ultracapacitor voltage and obtain a voltage reference for the router node microcontroller. Due to possible variation in supply voltage (VL), a xed 1.223 VDC voltage reference was used
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to determine the router node VL and microcontroller 10-bit A/D reference voltage (VREF). This voltage reference consisted of a 1.223 VDC zener diode that was part of the microcontroller IC. ADC7 (Port F of the microcontroller) was used to measure this xed 1.223 VDC voltage reference. For example, if D1 corresponds to the digitized 1.223 VDC input ADC7 value, 1
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380 The calculated VREF was in turn used to determine the 381 ultracapacitor voltage (VC) in the router node software. 382 If D2 corresponds to the digitized ADC3 value, 384 V C D2 V REF =1024 385 386 387 388 389 The safe operating range of the router node microcontroller, transceiver, and peripheral circuitry is in the 2.7 3.6 VDC range. Therefore, a simple back-up power supply algorithm was inserted in the router node software which operated as indicated below:
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voltage until ADC3 < 2.7 VDC. At this point, PC0 = 1 and PC3 = 0. Therefore, Q1 is o and Q2 is on, and energy is routed from the back-up 3 VDC alkaline battery (VB) to the router node. In such a situation, the measured ADC3 value (D1) is transmitted to the basestation to indicate a potential problem in the solar panel-ultracapacitor bank. 3. If the router node is drawing power from VB and the solar energy source is restored, the router node waits for its ultracapacitor to be charged to 3.4 VDC, and then switches back to solar power, i.e., PC0 = 0 and PC3 = 1. During this condition, VC is greater than VB (=VREF), and therefore a simple resistor divider circuit was used for voltage scaling purposes in order to scale VC down below 3 VDC and facilitate correct VC measurements.
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390 1. Under normal operation, PC0 = 0 and PC3 = 1. 391 Therefore, Q1 is on and Q2 is o, and energy is routed 392 from the solar panel-ultracapacitor bank to the router 393 node. 394 2. If solar energy is lost (for example, a uorescent light 395 turns o or fails), then the ultracapacitor charge will 396 begin to drop resulting in a gradual reduction in supply
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5. Experimental results In order to determine the right number of solar panels for powering each router node a simple load simulation test was rst conducted. Fig. 9 shows a power supply simulating the source solar panel and a load resistance simulating the router node load. A signal generator was used that supplied a 5 VDC, 0.5 Hz, 50% duty cycle square wave signal
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(VSG) to the base of a BJT connected between the power source and the load resistance. The intention was to simulate a router node turning on and o every second at 50% duty cycle. Fig. 10 shows the steady state waveforms obtained during these tests. As can be seen from Fig. 10, when the load is on and draws power from the source, current is supplied from both the power supply as well as the ultracapacitor bank. For example, in the 12 s interval, initially the current supplied from the power supply (IP) equaled 11.3 mA and the current obtained from the ultracapacitor bank (IC) equaled 9.7 mA. At about 2 s, a higher IP current equal to 11.8 mA was required and a lower current of 9.2 mA is delivered by the ultracapacitors. This is because under load conditions, the capacitor voltage drops slightly resulting in a lower IC and higher IP requirement. However, in both instances the total current from the power supplyultracapacitor bank equaled about 21 mA. During the o intervals the power supply charges the ultracapacitors. Referring to the 23 s interval in Fig. 10, IC has a negative initial value of about 9.7 mA at 2 s. In this phase, the lost capacitor charge during the previous load condition is replenished by the power supply. As the capacitors charge, their terminal voltage builds up resulting in a lower current requirement of about 9.2 mA from the power supply at 3 s. The load voltage (VL) during the on-o operation cycles stabilized at about 3.24 VDC under steady state conditions. The maximum current drawn from the power supply when the router node turned on equaled approximately 12 mA. This implies that around six solar panels would be required to generate a similar amount of current. However, in a later test, when the power management circuit was inserted, it was found that the current requirement increased to approximately 14 mA. This indicated a solar panel require-
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After obtaining satisfactory results in the above tests, two MICAz motes were programmed as a router pair (R1 and R2) and one mote was programmed as the base-station. The base-station mote was connected to a PC via its serial port. Fig. 12 shows the router node voltage (VL) and the ultracapacitor voltage (VC) waveforms for R1. A one second on-o time was found to work well. In Fig. 12, the oscilloscope channel 2 waveform represents VL and channel 3 represents VC. It can be observed that both waveforms overlap each other indicating minimal voltage drop across Q1 and VC stabilized at about 3.06 VDC during the test. During the sleep (o) interval,
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ment of at least seven panels. As a factor of safety, it was decided to use eight solar panels in series-parallel to satisfy the power requirements for the energy scavenging circuit. Next, the energy harvesting circuit was built on a protoboard. Fig. 11 shows a Crossbow MICAz router node with its corresponding energy harvesting circuit board and back-up battery power supply. The size of each router node was fairly compact at 2.500 2.2500 100 . An experiment was conducted to measure the overall eciency of the energy harvesting circuit at a load current of about 25 mA at 3 VDC. For this experiment, a power supply was used as the energy source instead of the solar panel, and a potentiometer was used as the load to set the load current to the prescribed value. VL and VC were found to dier by only about 60 mV at a load current of 25 mA. The power supply current (IP) was found to be about 30 mA during this test and therefore, the overall circuit eciency was determined as follows:
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R1 oers extremely high impedance to the solar panel-ultracapacitor bank resulting in a current consumption on the order of tens of lA. From Fig. 8, since the RDS(ON) of Q1 is very low, almost all of VC is dropped across VL during the sleep interval. Since much higher current ows through Q1 during the on interval, not all of VC is available at the load end. In fact, from Fig. 13 at a much lower 100 mV/division scale, it can be observed that about 50 mV was found to account for Q1s RDS(ON) during this on phase. Since Q1s RDS(ON) was approximately 2 X at 25 mA drain current, a 50 mV voltage drop across its drain
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and source seemed about right. Fig. 13 also shows the ultracapacitor charge and discharge cycles during R1 o and on phases, respectively. Also, during the R1 o state, VL and VC can be seen to dier by about 10 mV which is possibly due to the leakage through the zener diode and other circuit components. The voltage ripple for VC was minimal and equaled about 15 mV indicating a very low ripple factor of about 0.49%. Fig. 14 shows a snapshot of VL and VC for both R1 and R2. Here, oscilloscope channels 2 and 3 were used for R1, and channels 1 and 4 were used for R2 to represent VL and VC, respectively. It can be observed
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Fig. 13. Router node VL and VC waveforms indicating ultracapacitor charge and discharge.
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that each router node has a one second on-o interval. Moreover, when R1 is on, R2 is asleep, and vice-versa so that R1 and R2 are never on at the same time. Just as in Fig. 12, VC for both router nodes stabilized at about 3.06 VDC. In another test, the preliminary application framework was tested with one sensor node and two router nodes that acted as a router pair. All three nodes were programmed to route their supply voltage (VL) to the base-station intermittently. The sensor node VL data was used to simulate a sensor reading. The intention was to rst comprehensively test
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the network framework and solar energy scavenging system before attempting to use the system in an industrial or hospital environment. The router nodes also transmitted their VL intermittently to enable the base-station to monitor and detect a possible failure in the solar panel-ultracapacitor bank. Each router node was powered through photovoltaic solar cells that scavenged energy from 34 W uorescent lights. Fig. 15 shows the set-up of a router nodes corresponding solar panels located close to the overhead lights. Both the router nodes operated at 50% duty cycle so that at any point of time one of them is on while
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Fig. 15. Solar panels set up close to overhead uorescent lights.
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the other is asleep. Data received by the base-station mote was rst stored in its on-chip memory and then transferred to the PC for analysis. A simple terminal program was designed in order to monitor incoming data from the base-station in real-time using the PC RS232 port. A test was conducted wherein the sensor and router nodes were left operational for more than a day. This test was necessary to observe the robustness of the system. Fig. 16 shows a snapshot of the terminal program after 24 h of operation, where the sensor node (S1) relays its VL approximately every ten seconds to the base-station. A relatively high 0.1 Hz data transmission frequency was chosen for this experiment. Referring to Fig. 16, nodes 1 and 2 are numbered as the two router nodes (R1 and R2), respectively, and the sensor node S1 is identied as node 3. In this experiment, only one router pair was used to transfer data from
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Fig. 17. Serial forwarder packet information.
S1 to the base-station. The information received at the base node is in the format shown in Fig. 17. It can be observed that node 3 (S1) used router node 2 (R2) to route its VL (which equaled CE616, i.e., 3302 mV) to the base-station at 13:05:11. The next set of data sent from node 3 is received at the base-station ten seconds later at 13:05:21. Also, in addition to the sensor node, both router nodes transmit their VL to the base-station approximately every thirty seconds. From, Fig. 16 it can be observed that 13:05:45, node 1 (R1) had a VLequal to B8B16, i.e., 2955 mV and at 13:05:49, node 2 (R2) had a RL equal to BC516, i.e., 3013 mV. This veries that the voltage obtained from each router nodes solar panel-ultracapacitor bank stabilized at an optimum load voltage of about 3 VDC. Similar results were obtained when the system framework was later tested with two router pairs to route the sensor node battery voltage to the base-station. 6. Conclusions The technique of scavenging solar energy for WSN router nodes that are used in indoor applications proved to be very eective. The method used for energy scavenging is quite traightforward and is not restricted to one particular type of indoor application. Several tests were carried out in order to evaluate the energy scavenging scheme. The 50%
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Fig. 16. Serial forwarder terminal program.
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617 Acknowledgements 618 619 620 621 622 623 624
This research was conducted in the Embedded and Adaptive computing group at the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD), and the work was carried out in the ambient computing and sensor network (ACSN) laboratory. The authors acknowledge the advice and assistance provided by Dr. Padmakar Kulkarni from University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.
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duty cycle per router node and the use of ultracapacitors to aid the solar panel bank resulted in a reduced solar panel power requirement. This strategy lowered the power rating of the energy scavenging circuit and therefore, reduced the circuit size and cost. Also, this accounted for a lesser number of solar panels per router node resulting in a modularized and compact design. The energy harvesting and power management circuit was found to be fairly ecient at about 82% which indicates minimal energy wastage. The preliminary network protocol was found to be fairly robust and the steady state VL requirement from each router nodes energy scavenging circuit stabilized at about 3 VDC which turns out to be the optimum power supply voltage for the nodes microcontroller and transceiver. The router node size will be reduced even further by implementing the energy harvesting and power management circuit on a printed circuit board. The future project directions involve identifying valid indoor applications for such a system. One such example involves a remote healthcare monitoring system wherein vital sign sensors such as ECG, BP monitors, and pulse oximeters are interfaced to sensor nodes and their measurements are routed to a base-station. In hospital settings, such systems will fair extremely well to monitor patient activity without needing the patient to be conned to his bed. Another interesting application involves design of remote at-home healthcare monitoring systems which monitor patient vital sign data. Here, a sensor node routes data to a base-station that has internet access and is located within the household premises. This base-station in turn transfers incoming data to a website database in a secure fashion, and therefore enables the doctor to monitor the patients health from a remote location in real-time. Such systems however, need to be recongurable so that a doctor has the resources to interface a variety of vital sign sensors to a sensor node and download its corresponding software before handing the sensor node to a patient. To this eect, an eort is underway to interface an A&D Medical UA767PC BP monitor [18] to MICAz sensor nodes in order to facilitate remote monitoring of blood pressure, and heart-rate data [19]. Also, an attempt is being made to interface other medical instruments such as portable ECGs, glucose monitors, and pulse oximeters to allow real-time monitoring of cardiac, blood glucose, and oxygen saturation data [20].
References
[1] J. Rabaey, M. Ammer, J. da Silva, D. Patel, S. Roundy, PicoRadio supports ad hoc ultra-low power wireless networking, IEEE Computer 33 (7) (2000) 4248. [2] B. Gates, The disappearing computer, The Economist, Special Issue: The World in 2003, p. 99, December 2002. [3] Crossbow Technology Inc., MICAz Developers Kit, 2005. Available from: <http://www.xbow.com/Products/productsdetails.aspx?sid= 105>. [4] Crossbow Technology Inc., MPR/MIB Users Manual, Rev. B, Document 7430-0021-06, 2005. Available from: <http://www.xbow.com/Support/Support_pdf_les/MPR-MIB_Series_Users_Manual. pdf>. [5] J. Paradiso, T. Starner, Energy scavenging for mobile and wireless electronics, IEEE Pervasive Computing 4 (1) (2005) 18 27. [6] S. Roundy, P. Wright, J. Rabaey, Energy Scavenging For Wireless Sensor Networks With Special Focus On Vibrations, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2004, ISBN 1-4020-7663-0. [7] V. Raghunathan, A. Kansal, J. Hsu, J. Friedman, M. Srivastava, Design considerations for solar energy harvesting wireless embedded systems, in: Fourth International Symposium on Information Processing in Sensor Networks Proceedings, pp. 457462, April 2005. [8] J.F. Randall, J. Jacot, The performance and modelling of 8 photovoltaic materials under variable light intensity and spectra, in: World Renewable Energy Conference VII Proceedings, Cologne, Germany, 2002. [9] HealthFrontier Inc., ecgAnywhere, 2005. Available from:<http:// www.healthfrontier.com>. [10] Smiths Medical PM, Inc., BCI Micro Power Oximeter Board, 2005. Available from: <http://www.smiths-bci.com/html/Products/ oem_products.htm>. [11] A & D Medical, Inc., UA-767BT Wireless Blood Pressure Monitor, 2005. Available from: <http://www.lifesourceonline.com/products/ telemonitoring.cfm>. [12] S. Arms, C. Townsend, D. Churchill, J. Galbreath, S. Mundell, Power management for energy harvesting wireless sensors, in: SPIE International Symposium on Smart Structures and Smart Materials Proceedings, March 2005. [13] Chipcon Technologies, Chipcon CC2420 2.4 GHz IEEE 802.15.4/ Zigbee-ready RF Transceiver, 2004. Available from: <http:// www.chipcon.com/les/CC2420_Data_Sheet_1_2.pdf>. [14] Atmel Inc., ATMega 128L Microcontroller Datasheet, 2004. Available from: <http://www.atmel.com/dyn/resources/prod_documents/ doc2467.pdf>. [15] M. Rahimi, H. Shah, G. Sukhatme, J. Heideman, and D. Estrin, Studying the feasibility of energy scavenging in a mobile sensor network, in: IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation Proceedings, pp. 1924, 2003. [16] Solar World Inc, 3.7500 2.500 , 4-4.0-100 monocrystaline solar panels, 2005. Available from: <http://www.solar-world.com/>. [17] Maxwell Technologies, PC5-5 Ultracapacitor Product Information, 2005. Available from: <http://www.maxwell.com/ultracapacitors/ products/PC5-5.html>. [18] A & D Medical, Inc., UA-767PC Wireless Blood Pressure Monitor, 2005. Available from: <http://www.andmedical.com/and_med.nsf/ html/UA-767PC>. [19] W. Walker, T. Polk, A. Hande, D. Bhatia, Remote blood pressure monitoring using a wireless sensor network, in: Sixth IEEE Annual Emerging Information Technology Conference Proceedings, Dallas, Texas, August 2006. [20] T. Polk, W. Walker, A. Hande, D. Bhatia, Wireless telemetry for oxygen saturation measurements, in: IEEE Biomedical Circuits and Systems (BiOCAS) Conference Proceedings, London, UK, November 2006.
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711 Todd W. Polk received his B.S. degree in 712 electrical engineering from Texas A&M Uni713 versity in 1984 and his M.S. in electrical 714 engineering from the University of Texas at 715 Dallas in 1991. After twenty years in industry 716 he returned to academia and is currently a 717 third-year Ph.D candidate in electrical engi718 neering at the University of Texas at Dallas. 719 His Ph.D dissertation topic focuses on remote 720 monitoring of patient vital sign data using 721 low-power sensor networks. His research 722 interests include wireless networks, energy harvesting, and telemedicine 710 applications. 723 724
Dinesh Bhatia is an Associate Professor in the electrical engineering department at the University of Texas at Dallas. He received his Bachelors degree in electrical engineering from Regional Engineering College, Suratkal, India, and his M.S and Ph.D degrees in Computer Science from UTD. His research interests include all aspects of recongurable and adaptive computing, architecture and CAD for FPGAs, physical design automation of VLSI Systems, power aware programmable architectures, network-on-chip solutions for SoCs, and applications of wireless sensor networks. He is a senior member of IEEE, Computer Society, Circuits and Systems Society, and Eta Kappa Nu.
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695 Abhiman Hande is a Research Associate in the 691 696 electrical engineering department at the Univer697 sity of Texas at Dallas. Before joining UTD, he 698 was an Assistant Professor in computer engi699 neering at Lake Superior State University, Sault 700 Ste. Marie, Michigan. He received his B.E degree 701 from the University of Bombay in 1996, and his 702 M.S and Ph.D degrees from the University of 703 Toledo in 2000 and 2002, respectively, all in 704 electrical engineering. His primary interests are 705 power electronics, microcontroller-based embed706 ded systems, and applications for wireless sensor networks. He is a 694 member of IEEE, Power Electronics Society, and SAE. 707 708
William Walker is a second-year graduate student in computer engineering at the University of Texas at Dallas. He received his B.S. degree in computer science from UTD in 2005 and then received the Get Doc Fellowship to pursue graduate studies. He is currently in the M.S program for computer engineering and intends to pursue a Ph.D upon completion. His research interests include biomedical applications for wireless sensor networks, biopotential signal processing, and embedded systems. Presently, he is investigating methods of energy harvesting for wireless nodes and eective techniques to display and store biomedical information at network base stations.

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MICPRO 1707 14 March 2007 Disk Used

No. of Pages 13, Model 5+ Jayalakshmi (CE) / Karthikeyan (TE)

Microprocessors and Microsystems xxx (2007) xxxxxx www.elsevier.com/locate/micpro

Indoor solar energy harvesting for sensor network router nodes

Abhiman Hande *, Todd Polk, William Walker, Dinesh Bhatia

0141-9331/$ - see front matter 2007 Published by Elsevier B.V. doi:10.1016/j.micpro.2007.02.006

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Fig. 1. Patient remote health monitoring. VijayDevabhaktuni_Wireless_Proceedings.doc).

15 mW/cm2 330 lW/cm3 116 lW/cm3 40 lW/cm3 960 nW/cm3

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Solar energy source

Energy harvesting and energy storage

3.1. Solar cell characteristics

Program and data flash memory

Fig. 2. Block diagram of a solar energy harvesting wireless router node.

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Fig. 4. Network structure.

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Initialize Router Node Parameters

Locate Network Determine Shortest Path to Base Station

Acquire ID from Base Station

Fig. 5. Router node owchart.

Lost Network Connection ?

Already Received ID?

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Initialize Sensor Node Parameters

Determine Shortest Path to Base Station

Send Sensor Reading

Fig. 6. Sensor node owchart.

Fig. 7. Block diagram of a solar energy harvesting system.

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To ADC3 of microcontroller R2 300k

Fig. 8. Solar energy harvesting circuit with battery back-up.

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379 V L V REF 1:223 1024=D1

+ VP 4V, 25mA VC C 150 ohm

Fig. 9. Solar cell simulation test circuit.

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-10 Time (sec)

Fig. 10. Steady state solar cell simulation test waveforms.

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Fig. 12. Router node VL and VC waveforms.

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