MIT's New Chip Harvests Energy From Multiple Sources - Heat, Light Or Vibrations
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Oct 22, 2024
Oct 22, 2024
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PhD student Saurav Bandyopadhyay and MIT professor Anantha Chandrakasan have developed a new chip which could harness power from natural light, heat and vibrations in the environment to successfully operate on extremely low power levels. This kind of a chip has multiple applications in battery-free monitoring systems like biomedical devices, environmental sensors in remote locations and gauges in inconvenient spots.
Energy harvesting is a greener alternative when it comes to running devices. Low-power chips that can collect data and relay it to a central facility are currently under development along with systems that would run on environmental sources. But this new chip works efficiently by powering a single device using multiple power sources, a feature that works in favor of the device as many of these sources are unpredictable.
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In order to avoid any wastage of power being delivered from any of the sources, the approach combines energy from multiple sources by switching rapidly between them. An innovative dual-path architecture is applied to ensure minimum consumption of energy by the circuits, consequently optimizing power to devices.
The individual devices needed to operate on these energy sources have already been developed,  such as the difference between body temperature and outside air, or the motions and vibrations of anything from a person walking to a bridge vibrating as traffic passes over it. The concept is #-Link-Snipped-# being published this summer in the <em>IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.</em>
Source: #-Link-Snipped-#Â Image Credit: #-Link-Snipped-#
Energy harvesting is a greener alternative when it comes to running devices. Low-power chips that can collect data and relay it to a central facility are currently under development along with systems that would run on environmental sources. But this new chip works efficiently by powering a single device using multiple power sources, a feature that works in favor of the device as many of these sources are unpredictable.
#-Link-Snipped-#
In order to avoid any wastage of power being delivered from any of the sources, the approach combines energy from multiple sources by switching rapidly between them. An innovative dual-path architecture is applied to ensure minimum consumption of energy by the circuits, consequently optimizing power to devices.
The individual devices needed to operate on these energy sources have already been developed,  such as the difference between body temperature and outside air, or the motions and vibrations of anything from a person walking to a bridge vibrating as traffic passes over it. The concept is #-Link-Snipped-# being published this summer in the <em>IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.</em>
Source: #-Link-Snipped-#Â Image Credit: #-Link-Snipped-#