Project-PERPS-EN

Perpetual Power Supply for IoT – PERPS

http://www.perps.eu

Co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund of the European Union and Greek national funds through the Operational Program Competitiveness, Entrepreneurship and Innovation, under the call RESEARCH – CREATE – INNOVATE (project code:Τ1EDK-00360)

The PERPS project proposes:

  • a holistic approach to the development of feasible and sustainable innovative, technical solutions for the perpetual operation of IoT edge nodes and portable/wearable electronics
  • the development of methods, as well as specific power supply units, which will enable current and future embedded networked systems to operate globally by harvesting energy from their surroundings, adapting optimally to the time-varying available ambient energy content
  • the combination of a novel energy conversion integrated circuit (ENC IC), with real-time S/W algorithms, in order to allow the predictive estimation of energy availability at the system’s installation site, taking into consideration (hidden) repetitive patterns in the ambient energy signal
  • the ENC IC will be able to harvest in parallel energy from dissimilar sources including (ambient) light, (micro) vibrations and (small) temperature differences as well as the integration of triboelectric microgenerators will be conducted to ensure future exploitation of this promising energy harvesting method.
  • Energy estimations will trigger the node’s power management system, to optimally adapt power consumption to ensure survivability.

Specific research targets include:

  • Design of high-efficiency energy conversion microelectronic circuitry (including active rectifiers, DC/DC converters and storage management unit) with ultra-low-power parasitic consumption
  • Design of low-complexity energy estimation algorithms (to be executed in real-time in the node)
  • Definition of the power management characteristics which are necessary for fine-grain control and adaptation of the system’s consumption, in order to achieve energy survivability with optimal performance
  • Estimation of the actual efficiency of commercial and experimental energy harvesters, as well as field measurements of the energy signals, in order to provide a database for harvester dimensioning per application/installation environment (i.e. needed area of PV cell for indoor applications).

Results

  • Development and experimental evaluation of a new energy conversion integrated circuit (ENC IC) able to harvest in parallel energy from dissimilar sources using:
    • solar cells under indoor illumination
    • piezoelectric micro-generators under micro-vibrations
    • thermoelectric elements under small temperature differences as well as
    • small area triboelectric microgenerators
  • Development of real-time S/W algorithms, in order to allow the predictive estimation of energy availability
  • Development of a database for harvester dimensioning per application/installation environment (i.e. needed area of PV cell for indoor applications)

Consortium