A Shoe-Embedded Piezoelectric Energy Harvester for Wearable Sensors

Sensors

Jingjing Zhao¹ 

[1] Collaborative Innovation Center for Micro/Nano Fabrication, Device and System, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China

关键词: energy harvester;    wearable sensors;    power supply;    wearable energy harvester;   

DOI  :  10.3390/s140712497

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Harvesting mechanical energy from human motion is an attractive approach for obtaining clean and sustainable electric energy to power wearable sensors, which are widely used for health monitoring, activity recognition, gait analysis and so on. This paper studies a piezoelectric energy harvester for the parasitic mechanical energy in shoes originated from human motion. The harvester is based on a specially designed sandwich structure with a thin thickness, which makes it readily compatible with a shoe. Besides, consideration is given to both high performance and excellent durability. The harvester provides an average output power of 1 mW during a walk at a frequency of roughly 1 Hz. Furthermore, a direct current (DC) power supply is built through integrating the harvester with a power management circuit. The DC power supply is tested by driving a simulated wireless transmitter, which can be activated once every 2–3 steps with an active period lasting 5 ms and a mean power of 50 mW. This work demonstrates the feasibility of applying piezoelectric energy harvesters to power wearable sensors.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2014 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.