Scopes, challenges and approaches of energy harvesting for wireless sensor nodes in machine condition monitoring systems: a review

Abstract

Machine condition monitoring (MCM) plays an important role in reducing failure losses in the industry. Appropriate wireless sensor nodes (WSNs) used in MCM will allow the user to check the live status of machines. WSNs have numerous features, however, there are a lot of challenges in deploying the WSNs. One of the main challenges is the periodic replacement of batteries. Recently promising energy harvesting technologies have attracted the attention of researchers because of their potential to make the WSNs autonomous. This paper outlines the scopes of energy harvesters, potential ambient energy sources, and different energy harvesting techniques along with their advantages and disadvantages. In addition, various energy harvesting approaches established for WSNs have been reviewed and compared to enable easy selection of the best possible approach for MCM system. To provide intuition into future research prospects, the challenges faced by energy harvesting systems are summarized.