Applications of energy-driven computing: a transiently-powered wireless cycle computer

Abstract

There has been a dramatic increase in recent years in the number of battery-powered embedded electronic devices. However, the lifetime of these devices is limited by battery capacity. Energy harvesting is an efficient solution to overcome this limitation; however, large energy buffers have been traditionally employed to tackle the temporal variation of the source. These buffers typically require considerable time to charge while introducing a cost, size and weight overhead. Energy-driven systems are specifically designed to operate from an energy harvesting source, without overprovisioning energy storage to make the system appear "battery-like". Furthermore, a transiently-powered system is capable of sustaining computation despite an intermittent supply, without the need for additional energy storage. While this shows much promise, the wide applicability of these systems to real-life applications is yet to be demonstrated. This paper presents a transiently-powered wireless bicycle trip counter which measures distance, speed and active cycling time, and transmits data wirelessly. The system sustains operation by harvesting energy from the rotation of the wheel, operating from a minimum speed of 6kph, while adapting its operation
in response to the harvested energy.

More information

Identifiers

ORCID for Geoff V. Merrett: orcid.org/0000-0003-4980-3894

Catalogue record

Export record