Today batteries constitute the predominant source of electricity for compact low-power systems, especially for portable electronic devices. Despite the remarkable growth of their average duration, they still suffer degradation over time, therefore representing a limit to the duration of the whole system. Although the birth of low-cost batteries has encouraged the spread of mobile devices, they currently are holding back further expansion because their replacement and disposal are not possible in most applications to which the modern devices are designed. Consider, for example, a network of dozens or thousands of nodes scattered in a possibly hostile, inaccessible zone; in this case, the battery replacement becomes economically disadvantageous and physically difficult. A key role, in this sense, can be played by the energy harvesting and management technique [1, 2]. The concept of energy harvesting generally relates to the process of using ambient energy, which is converted, primarily, into electrical energy in order to power small and autonomous electronic devices [3-5].
展开▼
