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A feasibility study on energy harvesting from soil temperature differences
Publikationstyp
Conference Paper
Date Issued
2018-11-04
Sprache
English
Author(s)
Start Page
1
End Page
6
Citation
RealWSN 2018 - Proceedings of the 7th International Workshop on Real-World Embedded Wireless Systems and Networks, Part of SenSys 2018: 1-6 (2018-11-04)
Contribution to Conference
Publisher DOI
Scopus ID
Publisher
ACM
With regard to the growing number of wireless sensor network (WSN) and IoT longterm applications, energy harvesting becomes more and more popular i.a. due to the economical advantages compared to classical energy sources. Outdoor deployments for e.g. smart farming applications usually rely on solar-powered harvesters but this is not sufficient in any case. During previous outdoor deployments we observed, that soiling or shadowing by plants makes solar cells infeasible for ground-level sensors. We also observed that thermoelectric generators (TEGs) might be an alternative when utilizing the temperature gradient between the ground and the soil. Hence, this paper presents a longterm measurement as well as a feasibility study whether a WSN could be supplied by this approach. We collected and analysed data of more than a year and show the total amount as well as the characteristics of harvestable energy. Finally a load model of a typical WSN application is used to evaluate its performance and, therefore, to prove that energy harvesting from soil temperature differences is a realistic solution to power nodes and networks.
Subjects
Energy-harvesting
Thermometric generator
DDC Class
600: Technik
Funding Organisations
More Funding Information
This paper was partially funded by the German Research Council (DFG) under the grant no. BU 3282/2-1.