Energy Harvesting from Passive Human Power

Sustaining the power requirement for autonomous wireless and portable electronic devices is an important issue. Ambient power sources, as replacement of batteries, come into consideration to minimize the maintenance and the cost of operation by harvesting different forms of energy from the potential energy sources. Researchers continue to build high energy density batteries, but the amount of energy available in the batteries is not only finite but also low, limiting the life time of the systems. Extended life of the electronic devices is very important and also has more advantages in systems with limited accessibility. This research studied one of the forms of ambient energy sources that is passive human power from shoe/sneaker insole while person is walking/running and its conversion and storage into usable electrical energy. Based on source characteristics, electrical energy harvesting, conversion and storage circuits were designed, built and tested for low power electronic applications.

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