Multi-source energy harvesters are gaining interest as a robust alternative to power wireless sensors, since the sensor node can maintain its operation regardless of the fact that one of its energy sources might be temporarily unavailable. Interestingly, and less explored, when the energy availability of the energy sources present large temporal variations, combining multiple energy sources reduce the overall sparsity. As a result, the performance of a multiple energy harvester powered sensor node is significantly better compared to a single energy source which harvests the same amount of energy. In this context, a circuit area optimization framework for multiple source energy harvesting powered systems is proposed. This framework takes advantage of this improvement in performance to provide the optimal amount of energy harvesters, the requirements of each energy harvester and the required energy buffer capacity, such that the overall area or volume is minimized. As the results show, by conducting a joint design of the energy harvesters and the energy buffer, the overall area or volume of a sensor node can be significantly reduced. © 2014 IEEE.

Peer Reviewed