Design, implementation and optimisation of an energy harvesting system for vehicular ad hoc networks' road side units

Vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) research has spanned a wide variety of topics in recent years. This study deals with a subject rarely discussed in the literatures, the design procedure of a road side unit (RSU) armed with solar energy-harvesting circuit and its power management module. Embedded UBICOM IP2022 platform was adopted to implement the intended RSU. A complete design steps of the electronic circuit were described and the necessary values of the system component, that is, solar cell panels, battery cells and the DC-DC converter was tuned to suite the design goals. In order to decrease the power consumption of the suggested RSU and to extend the lifetime of the batteries, a power management module based on an artificial neural network and green scheduler was suggested. This scheduler is located in the control centre and composed of three algorithms in order of execution: the prediction, ON/OFF and evaluation algorithms. The adoption of the green scheduler reduces the power consumption of the nodes, which extends the battery life and decreases the number of the required battery cells.