Achieving perpetual and self-sustaining operation of wireless sensor nodes is an important topic of current research in the field of energy harvesting. Closely related to this is the employment of energy budgeting, i.e., effective utilization of available and future energy resources without pushing a node towards the hazard of energy depletion. Therefore, reliable prediction of node lifetime in...

All-inorganic visibly-transparent energy-harvesting clear laminated glass windows are the most practical solution to boosting building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) energy outputs significantly while reducing cooling- and heating-related energy consumption in buildings. By incorporating luminophore materials into lamination interlayers and using spectrally-selective thin-film coatings in conj...

Energy harvesting is an emerging technology with applications to handheld, portable and implantable electronics. Harvesting ambient vibration energy through piezoelectric (PE) means is a popular energy harvesting technique that can potentially supply 10 to 100’s of μW of available power [1]. One of the limitations of existing PE harvesters is in their interface circuitry. Commonly used full-bri...

Energy harvesting or power harvesting or energy scavenging is a process where energy is derived from external sources (e.g. solar power, thermal energy, wind energy, salinity gradients, kinetic energy etc.), captured, and stored for small, wireless autonomous devices, like those used in wearable electronics and wireless sensor networks. This paper is focused to applications of Energy Harvesting...

Energy efficiency in multi-hop cooperative power line communication (PLC) systems has recently received considerable attention in the literature. In order to make such systems more energy-efficient, this paper proposes a relaying technique equipped with energy-harvesting capabilities. More specifically, we consider a dual-hop decode-and-forward (DF) broadband PLC relaying system in which the re...

We consider a Sensor-Aided Cognitive Radio Network (SACRN) in which sensors capable of harvesting energy are distributed throughout the network to support secondary transmitters for sensing licensed channels in order to improve both energy and spectral efficiency. Harvesting ambient energy is one of the most promising solutions to mitigate energy deficiency, prolong device lifetime, and partly ...

Energy resource limitation is a severe problem in traditional wireless sensor networks (WSNs) because it restricts the lifetime of network. Recently, the emergence of energy harvesting techniques has brought with them the expectation to overcome this problem. In particular, it is possible for a sensor node with energy harvesting abilities to work perpetually in an Energy Neutral state. In this ...

one of the most important constraints in traditional wireless sensor networks is the limited amount of energy available at each sensor node. The energy consumption is mainly determined by the choice of media access mechanism. SMAC is a typical access mechanism that has drawn much attention in recent years. In WSNs, sensors are usually equipped with capacity-limited battery sources that can sust...

The process of photosynthesis is initiated by the capture of sunlight by a network of light-absorbing molecules (chromophores), which are also responsible for the subsequent funneling of the excitation energy to the reaction centers. Through evolution, genetic drift, and speciation, photosynthetic organisms have discovered many solutions for light harvesting. In this review, we describe the und...