Abstract:
Energy harvesting; that is, harvesting small amounts of energy from environmental
sources such as solar, air flow or vibrations using small-scale (≈1cm
3
) devices, offers the
prospect of powering portable electronic devices such as GPS receivers and mobile
phones, and sensing devices used in remote applications: wireless sensor nodes, without
the use of batteries. Numerous studies have shown that power densities of energy
harvesting devices can be hundreds of µW; however the literature also reveals that power
requirements of many electronic devices are in the mW range. Therefore, a key challenge
for the successful deployment of energy harvesting technology remains, in many cases,
the provision of adequate power. This thesis aims to address this challenge by
investigating two methods of enhancing the power output of a piezoelectric-based
vibration energy harvesting device. Cont/d.
