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Extended Wireless Monitoring Through Intelligent Hybrid Energy Supply

Michele Magno, Member, IEEE, David Boyle, Member, IEEE, Davide Brunelli, Member, IEEE, Brendan OFlynn, Member, IEEE, Emanuel Popovici, Senior Member, IEEE, and Luca Benini, Fellow, IEEE

Index TermsEnergy efciency, fuel cell, multisource energy harvesting, power electronics, power management, wireless sensor networks.

Manuscript received July 17, 2012; revised November 10, 2012 and February 4, 2013; accepted February 20, 2013. Date of publication June 18, 2013; date of current version September 19, 2013. This work was supported in part by the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) through the Green Sensor Networks for Structural Monitoring project under Grant 257916, by the ENIAC Joint Undertaking (JU) through the END project under SP7 Grant 120214, by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) ICT Innovation Communities Labs within the Activity #12149 From WSN Testbeds to CPS Testbeds, by the Digital City Exchange under Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Grant EP/I038837/1, and by the Autonomous Province of Trento through the EnerViS, Energy Autonomous Low Power Vision System project. M. Magno and L. Benini are with the Department of Electrical, Electronic and Information Engineering, University of Bologna, 40136 Bologna, Italy (e-mail: michele.magno@unibo.it; luca.benini@unibo.it). D. Boyle is with the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Imperial College London, London SW7 2AZ, U.K. (e-mail: david.boyle@ imperial.ac.uk). D. Brunelli is with the Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Trento, 38123 Trento, Italy (e-mail: davide.brunelli@unitn.it). B. OFlynn is with Tyndall National Institute, Cork, Ireland (e-mail: brendan. oynn@tyndall.ie). E. Popovici is with University College Cork, Cork, Ireland (e-mail: e.popovici@ucc.ie). Color versions of one or more of the gures in this paper are available online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TIE.2013.2267694

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AbstractThis paper presents the design, implementation, and characterization of a hardware platform applicable to wireless structural health monitoring (WSHM). The primary design goal is to devise a system capable of persistent operation for the duration of the life cycle of a target structure. It should be deployable during the construction phase and recongurable thereafter, suitable for continuous long-term monitoring. In addition to selecting the most energy efcient useful components to ensure the lowest possible power consumption, it is necessary to consider sources of energy other than, or complementary to, batteries. Thus, the platform incorporates multisource energy harvesting, electrochemical fuel cell (FC), energy storage, recharging capability, and intelligent operation through real-time energy information exchange with the primary controller. It is shown that, with appropriate integration, the device will have sufcient energy to operate perpetually in a distributed WSHM application. This conclusion is demonstrated through experimental results, simulations, and empirical measurements that demonstrate the high-efciency energy conversion of the harvesters (up to 86%) and low-power characteristics of the platform (less than 1 mW in sleep mode). It is shown that energy autonomy is comfortably achievable for duty cycles up to 0.75%, meeting the demands of the application, and up to 1.5%, invoking the FC.

TABLE I S ENSORS S ELECTED FOR GENESI

TABLE II E NERGY S OURCES

I. I NTRODUCTION HIS PAPER signicantly extends the work presented in [1]. Much of the structure and content is retained for completeness and motivation, including the extended analysis of the state of the art (see Sections I and II), with more detailed description provided of the technical implementation (see Section III), in addition to improved results and measurements (see Tables IIII, and V) and experimental analysis (see Section IV). The application of wireless sensor network (WSN) [2] technology to structural health monitoring (SHM) [3] is a very promising application area, with the potential to provide a

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TABLE III M EASURED P OWER C ONSUMPTION : T ELOS B V ERSUS GENESI M AIN L AYER

substantial and quantiable improvement over existing monitoring solutions for civil infrastructure, the construction industry, and beyond. SHM has become a requirement for the vast majority of structure types in civil engineering due to a number of contributing factors, including the following: 1) new emergent methods of risk analysis; 2) stricter regulation in terms of risk and liability linked to man-made structures; and 3) the need to ensure the longevity of existing structures (with respect to reduced maintenance costs and improved safety). Wired systems are characterized by expensive deployment and installation (commissioning), limited redeployment capability, and, in many instances, limited maintenance options. Wireless solutions are attractive to SHM practitioners, as installation and redeployment costs may be signicantly reduced, with mitigation provided against other potential hazards or difculties (for example, retrotting an existing structure with SHM capabilities or machinery on a construction site damaging cables used for SHM, respectively) [4][6]. Upon careful examination of the state of the art in SHM solutions exploiting WSN technology, it is evident that there exists the need for continued research and development at the hardware platform level, such that a long-lasting high-quality solution that meets, or exceeds, the user requirements can be developed. To this end, the current state of the art, and related work, is carefully examined in Section II-A, with respect to wirelessly enabled SHM solutions, and Section II-B, considering sustainable and smart power systems for WSNs. The current art cannot meet the requirements for a successful long-standing wireless SHM (WSHM) solution from two main perspectives. The rst is the inexibility of most systems to meet the needs of a range of sensors that are required by geomonitoring experts and engineers in the eld of SHM. The second is the widely reported difculty in providing adequate power to devices (i.e., the wireless sensor nodes) to enable them to continuously operate for the required periods. It is desirable that these devices should function normally for periods approaching the functional lifetime of the monitored structure. In most cases, this extends to decades. The main contribution of this paper focuses on the latter, wherein we propose a hardware solution to the energy problem through the combination of ultralow-power electronics, sensors, and, critically, a smart power solution that

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combines multiple energy production, storage, harvesting, and communicability capabilities. It is within the scope and the objectives of the Green sEnsor NEtworks for Structural monItoring (GENESI) project [8] to develop a WSN-enabled solution for SHM that is exible in its operation and suitable to address a range of potential deployment scenarios and constraints, is robust, delivers high quality of service, and offers signicantly enhanced lifetime (extending to decades). To achieve these goals, a bottomup approach has been taken. The platform and its hardware architecture are presented in Section III, together with a discussion of the rationale behind the abstraction, constituent components, and fundamental enablers. Furthermore, consideration is paid to the suite of sensors selected for a real-world pilot deployment of the technology, as informed by precision geomonitoring experts. The requirement exists to generate an accurate energy model capable of characterizing the expected longevity of a proposed WSN-based SHM (GENESI) solution. In order to develop the model, it is a requirement that the platforms energy characteristics are proled in the various modes of operation expected for a prospective functional deployment. To facilitate this objective, the energy characteristics of the hardware platform were investigated and evaluated. Section IV presents the results of this investigation. The platform has been developed with exibility and extensibility in mind, allowing for energy awareness to be exploited at higher layers of the stack. A conclusion and discussion of ongoing and future work are presented in Section V. II. R ELATED W ORK

The application of WSN technology to structural monitoring is very promising [4], [5]. There are many examples of proposed and deployed systems that attempt to exploit the expected synergy between wirelessly networked sensors and SHM. The problem of data sampling and collection is becoming critical as larger networks are being deployed. Increasing network size poses signicant data collection challenges, for what concerns sampling and transmission coordination as well as network lifetime. If, from the software point of view, power-aware algorithms have been proposed, such as in-network compression techniques [7], the most prevalent hardware limitation to date has been the availability of sufcient power to realize successful and persistent deployments. It is within the scope of the GENESI project to consider all relevant aspects of a successful system, including communications and networking protocols, quality of service, remote network reprogramming, querying, in-network processing, reasoning, data aggregation, adaptive sampling, etc. In-depth analysis of each of these aspects is beyond the scope of this paper, but it is important for the design of an appropriate hardware solution. Therefore, the platform must be designed to accommodate prospective advances and implementation of each of the aforementioned aspects. The focus of the following literature survey is twofold: 1) The hardware proposed or implemented for a variety of similar systems is considered and contrasted with the proposed GENESI solution, and 2) the emerging smart power solutions for WSNs are taken into consideration.

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A. WSHM In [4], the authors provide an excellent review of the state of the art in WSHM up to 2006. Historically, beginning from mid-1990s, academic sensing solutions applicable to SHM have been charted, in addition to a range of commercially available mote platforms (e.g., MICA2), and comparatively evaluated, concluding that the potential does exist for the widespread adoption of WSHM solutions, provided that the limitations of heterogeneity and nite energy resources could be overcome to allow for extended periods of functional operation, citing the potential to utilize energy harvesting (EH) mechanisms to improve functional longevity. In [9], the authors briey review the existing state of the art of WSHM prior to presenting a deployed 64-node wireless structural monitoring system applied to a long-span bridge (the famous Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, CA, USA). From a hardware perspective, the system uses only four microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) accelerometers and a temperature sensor interfaced with the MICAz platform. This platform was chosen due to favorable tradeoffs between computation and communication, and power consumption. Interestingly, it was noted that the sensor board consumed twice the power of the mote, resulting from a design decision to use a single power regulator for the node. It was concluded that, for a future real-time responsive WSHM system to be realized, the operating system should support multithreading to avoid delays in tasks during sampling, and a second microcontroller should be included to manage only the sampling, with the added benet of parallel computing (for simultaneous communication/processing). In [10], the authors present the latest iteration of the SmartBrick platform. This platform utilizes the ZigBee specication for in-network communication, enabled through the implementation of the Texas Instruments (TI) CC2480 transceiver (updated from the TI CC2430 used in previous embodiments) and controlled using a TI MSP430 microcontroller. The device is designed to accommodate a number of analog and digital sensor interfaces, thus ensuring that a large range of sensor types may be supported. The authors note three potential power sources for the platform: alkaline and rechargeable batteries and/or renewable sources, such as a solar panel. In [11], the authors present a WSN deployment for the monitoring of heritage buildings at Torre Aquila. The hardware platforms implemented are customized nodes similar to the Tmote/TelosB, inclusive of the TI MSP430 microcontroller and TI CC2420 radio transceiver, which are described in addition to the node types required for the deployment. These include environmental (temperature), deformation (ad hoc ber optic sensor), acceleration (triaxial MEMS accelerometer), and sink (Wi-Fi-enabled Gumstix) nodes. The worst case scenario for functional longevity using one pair of size C batteries experienced the death of a node after 3.2 months, estimating the overall system lifetime to extend beyond one year. In [34], the authors present a large hybrid WSHM network deployed on the Jindo Bridge, incorporating temperature, humidity, light, accelerometers, and wind sensors. The platform is based on the Imote2 with an energy-inefcient X-scale processor. The authors present solar and wind harvesting options

B. Smart Power Systems for WSNs

Wireless sensor nodes are typically powered by batteries with limited capacity. Interesting approaches to solve the energy problem are to attempt to achieve self-powered systems through the use of energy harvesters and various storage devices such as batteries (commonly Li-ion rechargeable ones) and supercapacitors [2], [12][23]. Since wireless sensor nodes for structural monitoring are expected to be mostly used in outdoor settings, the most commonly available ambient energy sources are photovoltaic wind turbine or mechanical energy (harvesting from vibrations or strain). Another solution is to adopt novel electrochemical fuel cell (FC) technologies that use fuel (hydrogen, for example) to generate electrical power. They are gaining popularity due to their higher energy densities (comparable with batteries) [24][26]. Although combining multiple harvesters can improve the availability of energy, it is noticeable that very few projects have incorporated multiple energy resources in a single power unit or platform. In [2] and [12][14], the authors attempt to achieve self-powered devices using singular various harvesters, but there is no possibility to combine heterogeneous harvesters or storage capabilities. The system presented in [15], developed at the University of California, combines EH from wind and solar sources with batteries and supercapacitors used for storage. This system has the added value of being capable to perform maximum power point (MPP) tracking (MPPT) [16]. The system in [17] describes a recongurable energy subsystem for WSNs, inclusive of solar and vibrational energy scavenging with Li-ion rechargeable batteries and supercapacitor for storage, one of the main features being exibility and the option to select and t the node in situ in a plug-and-play manner. In [18], a hybrid device with indoor light and thermal harvesting is presented. This is a good solution, architecturally similar to the GENESI unit, including an additional TI MSP430 only to perform MPPT. There is, however, no possibility to recharge Li-ion batteries or use FC technology. In addition, the system supplies the power to the node without the provision to exchange status information, as is the case for the proposed unit. In [23], the authors present a power unit with three environmental energy scavengers used to recharge NiMh batteries. The limitation in this case is that the storage pack cannot be changed and the power unit provides very little information relating to the status of its constituent components. Considering FC technologies, an interesting approach is presented in [24], wherein the authors describe a microbial FC

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to prolong the lifetime of the network; complementing the 10 000-mAh battery required to supply the devices. The authors results are presented based on a short deployment period, with no estimate of functional longevity provided. Surprisingly, there are no commercial products on the market that offer the functionality proposed by the GENESI WSN system with respect to exibility (in terms of the number of supported sensors), adaptivity (sampling modes and rates), alarming capabilities, robustness (ruggedized for harsh environmental conditions), or intelligent renewable energy supply.

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Fig. 1. Prototyped GENESI hardware platform. Sensors for real deployments will be wired through a suitable IP compliant enclosure for the node which must protect against moisture and impact. The power unit monitor is realized as a secondary MSP430 MCU, capable of providing real-time power information, enabling true energy awareness.

B. WSN Hardware

III. GENESI H ARDWARE P LATFORM

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The GENESI hardware platform can be abstracted as three functional layers (sensor interface, main processing and communications board, and power conditioningillustrated in 0, allowing for fast concurrent development of hardware subcomponents). In order to quantify the impact and suitability of the smart power unit (SPU), which comprises the power layer, it is necessary to understand the energy requirements of the full hardware suite. The hardware architecture presented in [1] has been fully implemented (see Fig. 1) and is described in the following sections. As the main contribution of this paper pertains to the SPU, this is the focal point of explanation. Section III-C presents a detailed explanation of the design methodology, component selection, and implementation.

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A. Novelty The GENESI platform is designed to exceed the state of the art in WSHM from multiple perspectives. Primarily, the lifetime of the nodes, and therefore GENESI networks, is expected to signicantly surpass any existing solution through combining the SPU with low-power component and algorithm selection throughout the stack. True energy awareness, provided through

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C. SPU
1 http://pont-poya.ch/ 2 http://www.solexperts.com/

with harvester system which is prospectively self-powered, sustainable, environment friendly, and maintenance free. However, this system has very low power output (0.8 mW) compared to the FC subsystem (1 W) proposed in this paper. Furthermore, there is no exibility to add harvesters or to recharge Li-ion batteries. Therefore, it is not suitable for structural monitoring where the application eld and scenario can change depending upon the deployment. In [26], the authors describe an FC and battery hybrid system for use in portable microelectronic systems, characterizing and analyzing the performance of the system. While this work does not consider energy harvesters and is not necessarily suitable for WSNs, the authors describe the benets of hybrid systems for embedded electronic systems, supported by measurements of efciency. Similar benets are described in [25], in which the authors describe a hybrid system combining FC technology with supercapacitors. Although the FC output is around 30 V and not suitable for WSN implementation, the authors provide results on the usage of FC technology and its potential utility for embedded systems.

The sensor layer incorporates the necessary circuitry to accommodate plug-and-play functionality (including voltage (dcdc) conversion, up to 22-b analog-to-digital converter (ADC), and additional ash memory) with analog and digital sensors selected for the initial pilot deployments of the GENESI platform. It interfaces physically to the main layer using standard commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) connectors. The main layer consists of a traditional WSN device conguration of a low power consumption microcontroller and a low-rate wireless transceiver. 1) Sensor Layer: The sensor layer has been prototyped on a PCB to accommodate a suite of sensors applicable to the structural monitoring of a bridge (Pont de la Poya1 in Freiburg, Switzerland), carefully selected by the geomonitoring experts2 tasked with supervising the integrity of the structure. The sensor types chosen are cataloged in Table I. A more in-depth analysis of the energy requirements of the various sensors, in addition to further implementation details, is available in [33]. 2) Communication/Computation Main Layer: The primary components of the main layer are the TI MSP430F5437 micro controller unit (MCU) and TI CC2420 IEEE 802.15.4-2003 (2.4 GHz) compliant wireless transceiver. The main processing and communications block, or mote, continues to conform to the stackable Tyndall 25 25 mm form factor [32].

The SPU is an advanced microcontroller-based system which uses both EH and electrochemical FC technologies as power sources to supply the node during operation and to recharge onboard storage when these are depleted. The SPU provides both solar and wind harvesting capabilities for the hybrid storage of energy, in combination with a hydrogen-based microFC interface. In [1], the authors presented the SPU architecture and interfaces with the wireless sensor node. Furthermore, the power supply presents a digital interface which delivers information as regards its operational condition and energy status to the supplied node and accepts commands to dynamically adapt internal parameters accordingly. As illustrated in [1] and in Fig. 2, the SPU has a microcontroller which also provides the digital interface. This important feature, and the possibility to control and optimize operating

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SPU interfacing (i.e., using I2 C for regular communication and GPIO for hardware-enabled interrupts) to the main mote layer, allows for opportunistic sampling, and, potentially, adaptive networking protocols, during periods of high ambient energy availability (and/or saturated storage facilities) and allows it to exceed the current art. It is a design goal that the platform should remain operational for periods extending to decades to meet the requirements of long-term SHM applications. Experimental results suggest that this target is realistic, and they are assessed in the following section.

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Fig. 2.

SPU block architecture.

Fig. 3. Solar harvester subsystem architecture.

parameters in the eld, implies that the SPU is a smart device. In particular, it is possible to monitor the current state of the harvesters, storage, and micro-FCs. Furthermore, it is possible to change the operating frequency used by internal dcdc converters and chargers to increase the efciency of the energy conversion of the power unit. The power unit was implemented around the ultralowpower TI MSP430F2274 microcontroller (16-b processor, with 32-kB FLASH, 1-kB RAM, 10-b ADC, two op-amps, and two USB interfaces), which executes programmable power management policies and provides the required exibility and energy awareness, as the node may be deployed in different locations with varying environmental power availability. The microcontroller can select the optimal power resources available at any particular period in time so as to guarantee the maximum power efciency and may interact with both the onboard components and the higher level intelligence of the platform. The selection of the microcontroller was primarily driven by the very low power consumption (2 W in sleep mode) and because it has all the peripherals needed to implement the following advanced features. 1) Dynamic MPPT. The power unit can decide autonomously whether to activate this feature. The activation of such a circuit is justied only if the power consumed to perform the tracking of the MPP is signicantly less than that gained by MPPT on the energy transducer. 2) Dynamic selection of the energy source used to recharge the reservoirs and supply the node. 3) Dynamic alteration of the operating frequency and duty cycle. This capability serves to increase the efciency of the energy conversion of the power unit. 4) Dynamic selection of storage increases the efciency of the power unit and extends the cycle lifetime of batteries. The unit can host two batteries concurrently, selecting one for charging and one for discharging at any particular time depending on their condition, alternatively selecting the supercapacitor. Considering the application space and envisaged operational environmental conditions, it was decided to focus on efciently scavenging energy from air ow and sunlight concurrently, by means of micro wind turbines and photovoltaic cells, thereafter

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storing the harvested energy in a dedicated supercapacitor (acting as a primary storage element). This required the design of two independent harvesting subsystems. Both energy paths simultaneously and automatically recharge a secondary storage element (a lithium-ion battery). The FC uses a separate and unique energy path and is used as a backup silent energy source, activated by the microcontroller in the case of long-term energy shortage (due to low environmental power intake) or depleted storage conditions. Information transfer between the two MCUs can ensure that the SPU provides the required power to support continuous operation during important applicationdened events. In the following sections, the primary functional blocks of the SPU are explained in more detail. 1) Solar Harvester Subsystem: As shown in Fig. 3, the solar subsystem consists of a solar harvesting cell, a dcdc boost converter driven by pulsewidth modulated (PWM) switching (controlled by the MSP430), and a supercapacitor (PV_SCAP). The dcdc is needed to interface the solar panel with the storage capacitor. To perform MPPT and achieve the maximum conversion efciency, the transistor of the dcdc is derived from the PWM signal generated by the tracking algorithm. Commonly used MPPT systems presented in the literature employ three topologies for switching: boost (step-up), buck (stepdown), and buckboost (step-downstep-up). A standard COTS boost was chosen due to the possibility to select the lowest power components and the specications of the solar panel used (under 5-V maximum voltage). In fact, the solar dcdc uses an SL44 diode (Vishay), a PMF280UN115 MOSFET, and a Coilcraft inductor, which were chosen for the low power consumption. Uniquely to this system, the PWM signal is controlled directly by the onboard microcontroller which performs the MPPT algorithm estimating the open circuit voltage of a smaller cell (PV_PILOT CELL) made from the same technology of the main PV. This pilot cell is used to allow the MCU to perform the MPPT algorithm as explained in [27] and [28], without interfering with the recharging circuits, and to have a more accurate estimation. Finally, an ORing Schottky diode ensures the recharging of the Li-ion battery through the recharge energy path. The SL44 from Vishay was selected due to the very low drop voltage of 0.3 V.

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Fig. 4. Wind harvester subsystem architecture.

Fig. 5. FC subsystem.

2) Wind Harvester Subsystem: Fig. 4 shows the wind harvester subsystem. It consists of an acdc converter, a buckboost converter driven by PWM and MCU, and one supercapacitor, in addition to the ORing Schottky diode SL44 from Vishay. The circuit used to convert the ac waveform at the output of the wind generator into a dc voltage is shown in Fig. 4. BAT47 Schottky diodes have been used in the bridge to minimize power losses caused by their voltage drop, and they were selected for the low power consumption. In order to charge the supercapacitor, and then the Li-ion battery, the rectier signal needs a dcdc converter. A boost converter driven by the microcontroller was selected similarly to the solar harvester, with the same electronics used. As for the solar harvester, the MCU has to drive the PWM signal to achieve the MPPT algorithm [29]. Thus the microcontroller can perform the two MPPT algorithms simultaneously when it is active, although the PWM signals are different, as they are based on two different algorithms. 3) FC Subsystem: As Fig. 5 illustrates, the FC path is relatively simple, with overvoltage protection, in addition to an ORing diode, to guarantee the maximum voltage (5.1 V) required for the recharger. A single cell in normal operation typically produces 0.71.4 V, but several cells can be connected in series, arranged in a stack that can supply 5 V or more. In the approach proposed, the power unit operates with max-

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Fig. 6. Recharging schematics. The power unit uses the Linear Technology LTC4070 as battery recharger for all the sources.

imum efciency if the FC has a 5-V output. However, with this conguration, the power provided by FC to recharge the Li-ion battery should be at least 4.2 V and have a current of 1 mA. If a single micro-FC is used, it is necessary to insert a step-up dcdc converter on the jumper (J10), which would otherwise decrease the total recharging efciency because of the conversion power leakage. On the other hand, adding a dcdc converter can reduce the size of the whole system as only one FC is connected, rather than several in series. Thus, the tradeoff between cost, efciency, and size is decided in the deployment and specication phases according to the scenario constraints. If the size is the strictest constraint, it uses just one FC with 1.5 V; otherwise, if the size (and cost) is not important as much as the efciency, it is better to use more FC in series so as to have 4.5 V and increase the efciency of the smart recharging unit. 4) Output and Storages: Connecting switching power supplies in parallel is possible due to the ORing Schottky diodes. As Figs. 3 and 4 illustrate, the solar panel and wind turbine can each charge a dedicated supercapacitor, each, in turn, acting as a primary energy reservoir. Then, through the ORing diodes (D6 and D7), the energy can be mutually transferred to the battery recharging path from the supercapacitors. The supercapacitor with the higher voltage will recharge the battery. Also, the FC uses the same ORing diodes, so the source which has the largest output voltage is automatically selected to recharge the battery, while the other sources recharge their supercapacitors. Because the FC is activated by the microcontroller when the other sources are empty, therefore, the supercapacitors will be in a low-voltage state, and it is assumed (and shown) that it will recharge the Li-ion battery directly since it will have the highest voltage. Fig. 6 shows the recharging stage of the SPU. The input of this stage is the signal Vamp , which is the output of the ORing diode. The SPU uses a simple and ultralow-power shunt charger from Linear Technology (LTC4070), which allows the charging of Li-ion/polymer batteries with very low current from intermittent or continuous charging sources. The device was chosen for the very low operating current (450 nA) and the

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Fig. 8. Solar panel characterization. Output power (V I) versus output voltage (V) by different sunlight intensity. The red line highlights the MPP.

additional features which it presents, such as battery protection and high/low battery status output, allowing recharging from environmental sources, including solar and wind. Owing to these features, the LTC4070 prevents the overvoltage and undervoltage of the battery. In fact, if the battery voltage is diminishing, the LTC4070 can set the low battery monitor output (LBO) pin so as to disconnect the battery from the load driving the transistor Q5 in Fig. 6. As shown in the following section, this conguration provides high efciency for the harvesters and FC recharging. Using this circuit is also the best option for the FC due to a very high efciency and the battery protection. This is veried experimentally and discussed in the following section. IV. E XPERIMENTAL R ESULTS

The prototyped platform has been evaluated experimentally with respect to EH performance (for the SPU), and operational power consumption models for the entire platform have been developed. The approach is multidimensional. The harvesters were proled over a period of time to obtain their characteristics in an operational environment. The efciency of the SPU, as dened hereinafter, was investigated for each subsystem (including both EH and FC). The sensor and the main layers of the entire platform were tested for various use cases to characterize their energy consumption. The results of the characterization of the EH subsystems and the hardware in various modes of operation are presented in the following sections. This allows for an accurate simulation (using MATLAB) to be carried out in order to ascertain the expected performance of the system in a realistic deployment scenario informed by quantitative data obtained for the functioning harvesters. A. SPU Efciency and Performance Evaluation Fig. 7 shows the harvesters and FC used to evaluate the performance of the SPU in terms of efciency and functionality. On the left side of the gure, there is a 112-cm2 PV module which provides maximum 450 mW. Efciency was measured, with MPPT active and recharging both a supercapacitor and

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Fig. 7. Platform test bed with solar harvester, wind harvester Li-ion batteries and FCs, and main layer node.

Fig. 9. Wind turbine characterization. Output power (V I) after the acdc rectier versus load resistance by different wind speed. The red line highlights the MPP.

Li-ion batteries. On the right side of the gure is a wind turbine used for air-ow EH with a maximum 10-mW output. It is made of plastic, with a four-bladed horizontal axis, and has a diameter of 6.3 cm. The smaller PV panel next to the wind generator is the pilot cell used by the power unit (providing voltage) to enable the execution of the MPPT algorithm. The cylindrical tank is a commercial hydrogen reservoir connected to a single FC. The FC is connected to a step-up dcdc converter, which provides a 5-V output. Performance is evaluated in terms of efciency of the recharging batteries. The prototyped platform has been evaluated experimentally, and Table II details the power provided from different sources. Figs. 8 and 9 show the power characterization of the two environmental scavengers, which were measured under different conditions, and the MPP of both harvesters (red lines). For the solar harvester, we measured the output voltage and the output power, outdoors, directly on the solar cell using a digital multimeter and a light sensor to measure the luminous ux (LUX) of the sun. In the same way, we measured the wind power accordingly with a load resistor. A fan with varying speeds and an anemometer were used to evaluate the wind speed. To evaluate the performance of the SPU, the microcontroller performs the MPPT algorithm to improve the conversion efciency. The efciency of conversion stages is shown in Table II taking into account the energy spent by the microcontroller performing MPPT. In order to reduce the power consumed by

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TABLE IV GENESI N ODE P OWER C ONSUMPTION

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B. Empirical GENESI Node v1.0 Power Characterization The platform consists of a variety of active components. Energy consumers (e.g., sensors, MCU, etc.), energy providers (e.g., wind, solar, FC, etc.), and conversion circuitry (e.g., dc/dc, charger, etc.) coexist. The performance in terms of power consumption and energy availability is shown in the following tables (see Tables III and IV, respectively). Table III considers energy-consuming components, with varying modalities. Furthermore, the energy loss due to converter circuits is considered and included in the overall efciency rating of each single harvester.

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the MSP430, the rmware was implemented to minimize the active time. The average time needed to perform the MPPT algorithm for both wind and solar harvesters is 22.5 ms; therefore, although the power unit can adapt dynamically its duty cycle, in the following experimental result, the microcontroller evaluates the MPPT every 30 min, which guarantees a good tradeoff between power consumption and response time (since the weather conditions tend to vary insignicantly within a 30-min window). Under these conditions, the microcontroller spends most of the time (30 min), except 22.5 ms, in sleep mode, consuming less than 5 W. As shown in the table, the average efciency of both harvesters is 85%86%, similar to the efciency data presented in [15][18] (representative of the state of the art for solar and wind EH in the context of WSNs). The reason for marginally lower efciency is due to the presence of a microcontroller. The microcontroller, however, provides important features in terms of power management and future policy implementation. These polices could signicantly improve the overall efciency of the system as a whole. Here, efciency is evaluated by measuring the power output of each single source (solar, wind, and FC) coming to the power unit (PINi ), and power out (POUTi ) from the unit, going into the battery. In the case of the wind harvester, PIN is the power after the rectier. The efciency shown in Table II is the minimum and the maximum value of POUTi /P INi 100, measured under different conditions. For the solar panel and the wind turbine, the measured data were collected over ten days and at different battery levels. For the FC, the efciency shown takes into account the energy lost through dcdc conversion and battery recharging. It is evaluated as the average efciency in 2 h of recharging the Li-ion battery, with a xed 100-mA current. The state-of-the-art comparison in Table II is base on the typical dcdc converter for FC to recharge Li-ion batteries [25].

Fig. 10. Solar energy harvested during ve consecutive days from the SPU with the PV panel.

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C. MATLAB Simulation

Fig. 11. Wind energy harvested during ve consecutive days from the SPU by the 7-cm turbine. TABLE V M ODALITIES S IMULATED

The SPU was deployed on the roof of the laboratory for ve days, sampling every 10 min the power intake from the solar and wind harvesters. Figs. 10 and 11 show the plots of energy intake from both harvesters over the ve-day period. MATLAB simulation was employed to evaluate the expected lifetime of the node under various scenarios. Simulation was conducted assuming the SPU equipped with an 800-mAh Li-ion battery, an FC with HYDROSTICK by Horizon [31], and the aforementioned solar panel and wind turbine as environmental scavengers. The results of the harvesting experiment described earlier were used as input for these simulations. Moreover, according to the tests conducted, it is reasonable to assume that the quantity of hydrogen in the tank can recharge the 800-mAh battery four times and supply the node when the battery level falls below 10% of the battery capacity. The recharging time is xed at 2.5 h. The MATLAB script evaluates the battery energy every 10 min according to the intake energy of all the sources, the power consumption of the node, and the previous level of the battery in that period, according to the following mathematical model: Ebat (t) = Ebat (t 1)+Esol (t)+Ewind (t)+EFC (t) ENode (t) (1)

where Ebat and Ebat (t 1) are the energies of the battery at times t and t-1, Esol (t), Ewind (t), and EFC (t) are the intake

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energy components for solar, wind, and FC for the 10 min, and, nally, ENode (t) is the power consumption of the whole node (main layer, radio, sensors, and power unit) during the same period. Since the nodes power consumption depends on the node activities to evaluate the performance of this approach, three scenarios with different achievable duty cycles and conditions which correspond to signicant differences in terms of power consumption of the node were used. Table III shows the duty cycles for the various scenarios for the node, radio, and sensor. The duty cycle (D) of the nodes activity is dened as the fraction of time when the node is in an active state D = ton /T T = ton + to (2) (3)

Te ch no lo gi es ,

where T is the period, ton is the active time, and to is inactive. Furthermore, the sensor node must be active long enough for the sensor to wake/warm up (twakeup ) and to acquire the measured data (tacquire ). Furthermore, data transmission, as a subset of the nodes communications responsibilities (tcommunicate ), must also be considered ton >= twakeup + tacquire ton >= twakeup + tacquire + tcommunicate . (4) (5)

According to the functional requirements for a typical structural monitoring deployment, the platform needs to collect data from sensors in normal mode 48 times per day. Values (twakeup + tacquire ) = 4.5 s (reasonably accurate due to sensor warmup requirements, multiple sensor channels, etc.) for acquiring sensor data and tcommunicate = 4.5 s for radio activity are used. Empirical evaluation suggests that these times are sufcient to wake the node and sensor and to perform acquisition. A similar amount of time is allowed for communication activities, such as synchronization, information transfer, etc. Thus, a duty cycle of 0.05% with ton = 9 s from (2) means T = 18 000 s (and that from (3) means to = 17 991 s). The node will acquire data every 5 h, enough to collect a minimum of four samples per day, satisfying the requirements. In addition, we simulated critical and alarm scenarios (as required by end users), dened

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Fig. 12. MATLAB simulation in gure shows a nodes battery level according to the energy incoming and the nodes activities. Furthermore, the FC activation is shown for the alarm mode, outside of which perpetual operation is predicted for normal and critical modes.

in Table V, as these scenarios require higher frequencies of sampling, data acquisition, and information transmission. Fig. 12 illustrates that, under these conditions, the proposed platform is capable of working perpetually both in normal mode and in critical mode. Furthermore, the simulation shows that, in alarm mode, when the battery of the node is close to 10% (due to the depletion of resources and the inability of the harvesters to supply the required power in the functional modality), the microcontroller can activate the FC to recharge the battery and supply the node. This conrms that the FC is very useful in terms of signicantly increasing the lifetime of the node in alarm situations where the battery drains rapidly (i.e., the duty cycle of the node is 1.5%). Using this conguration, it can be stated with reasonable condence that the platform will survive for several days in alarm situations, which typically do not persist for long periods. V. C ONCLUSION

The design, implementation, and characterization of a prototype hardware platform that achieves energy autonomy for low duty cycle WSHM applications have been presented. The development of an advanced SPU, with hybrid EH capability and electrochemical FC integration, coupled with intelligence and interoperability, represents a signicant improvement over the current state of the art. The platform was designed for ultralowpower operation, with less than 1 mW in sleep mode to achieve continuous operation using only one 800-mAh battery, one FC, and solar and wind harvesters. Interfaced with the appropriate WSN hardware infrastructure, the platform is provably suitable for long-term WSHM. Experimental results demonstrate that, even with an extra MCU to provide additional novel features, the overall efciency is still comparable with the state of the art of harvesting solutions, giving very high energy conversion efciency up to 86% and a low quiescent current of only 5 A. Simulation has shown that the platform can comfortably operate energy autonomously for duty cycles up to 0.75% using the harvesters alone and, with the invocation of the FC, can achieve extended lifetime for a duty cycle of 1.5% (which equates to six samples collected and transmitted per hour).

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R EFERENCES
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Michele Magno (M13) received the M.S. degree and the Ph.D. degree in electronic engineering from the University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy. He is a Postdoctoral Fellow with the MicrelLab group, University of Bologna. The most important themes of his research are on power management techniques and the extension of the lifetime of wireless sensor networks. In this eld, he has worked actively both on the energy efciency of the nodes and the network and on the use of harvesters, such as solar panels and wind, and using the fuel cells to hydrogen to feed the nodes and recharge the batteries. He has collaborated with several universities and research centers such as ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland, the University of Cork, Cork, Ireland, Tyndall Institute, Cork, the University of Trento, Trento, Italy, and Politecnico di Torino, Torino, Italy. He has published 20 papers in international journals and conferences.

David Boyle (M07) received the B.Eng. degree in computer engineering and the Ph.D. degree, for work in the eld of security for wireless sensor networks, from the University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland, in 2005 and 2009, respectively. He is a Research Fellow with the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Imperial College London, London, U.K. Before joining Imperial, he was a Postdoctoral Researcher at Tyndall National Institute, Cork, Ireland, a Research Engineer with Orange Labs (France Telecom R&D), and a Visiting Postdoctoral Scholar in the Telecommunications Engineering School at the Technical University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain. He has authored patents and papers in international peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings, contributes to the peer-review process, and collaborates internationally with industry and academia. His current research interests include networked embedded monitoring and control systems in the urban environment, at the conuence of various disciplines.

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Brendan OFlynn (M06) received the B.E. (Hons.) degree from University College Cork, Cork, Ireland, in 1993 and the M.Eng.Sc. degree from the National Microelectronics Research Centre (NMRC), University College Cork, in 1995. His thesis was on the reliability of novel packaging techniques for bare die (chip on board) and multichip-modulebased systemsspecically in the area of Glop top encapsulation. He was one of the founders of Inpact Microelectronics Ireland Ltd. and has signicant expertise in the commercialization of technology. Inpact (a spin-off from the NMRC) specialized in the development of system in a package solutions for customers. He is currently with Tyndall National Institute, Cork.

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Luca Benini (F07) received the Ph.D. degree from Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA, in 1997. He is a Full Professor of Digital Integrated Circuits and Systems in the Department of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland, and a Professor of Electronics at the University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy. He is also currently serving as the Chief Architect in STMictroelectronics (AST Division, Grenoble). His research interests are in the design of SoC platforms for embedded applications. He published more than 600 papers in peer-reviewed international journals and conferences, four books, and several book chapters (h index = 68 on Google Scholar). Prof. Benini is an Associate Editor of several international journals (IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON I NDUSTRIAL I NFORMATICS and ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems). He is a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant winner, a member of the Academia Europaea, and a past member of the steering board of ARTEMISIA.

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Davide Brunelli (M10) received the M.S. (summa cum laude) and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy, in 2002 and 2007, respectively. He has been an Assistant Professor with the University of Trento, Trento, Italy, since 2010. He was leading industrial cooperation activities with Telecom Italia. His research interests concern the development of new techniques of energy scavenging for wireless sensor networks (WSNs) and embedded systems, the optimization of low-power and lowcost WSNs, and the interaction and design issues in embedded personal and wearable devices.

Emanuel Popovici (SM08) received the Dipl.Ing. degree in computer engineering from the Politehnica University Timisoara, Timisoara, Romania, in 1997 and the Ph.D. degree in microelectronic engineering from the National University of Ireland, Cork, Ireland, in 2002. He has been a Lecturer with the Department of Microelectronic Engineering, National University of Ireland, since 2002. Between 1997 and 2001, he did his research on efcient algorithms and architectures for encoding/decoding of block codes within the National Microelectronics Research Centre (now the Tyndall National Institute), Cork. Prior to his appointment as Lecturer, he was a Postdoctoral Research Engineer with University College Cork, Cork, working on hardware accelerators for e-commerce cryptography. His research interests include embedded system design for reliable and secure computing and communications.