Ambient energy harvesting for low powered wireless sensor network based smart grid applications

Abstract

Limited battery lifetime is one of the most critical issues for wireless sensor networks (WSNs)-based smart grid (SG) applications. Recently, ambient energy harvesting (AEH) has been considered to significantly improve the network lifetime of the WSNs-based SG applications. However, extracting a significant amount of energy from the ambient energy resource due to time varying links quality affected by power grid environments is the main issue for WSNs-based applications in SG. In this paper, we propose a novel multi-source energy harvesting mechanisms for WSNs-based SG applications. The propose hybrid ambient energy harvesting framework through the designed circuitry successfully harvests massive power density by capturing the radial electric field (EF) and ambient radio frequency WiFi 2.4GHz band signals present in the vicinity of 500kV power grid station. The design energy harvesting schemes have been implemented on the recently developed routing protocol for SG applications. The experiments using EstiNet9.0, demonstrate that the designed framework is efficient in terms of energy harvesting capabilities to enable a long-lasting lifetime of the WSNs-based smart grid applications.