Energy Harvesting Sensor Node Toward Zero Energy In-Network Sensor Data Processing

In this paper, we aiming to realize near-zero energy distributed IoT systems that do not need a battery, we design and implement a novel energy harvesting (EH) sensor node. The proposed EH sensor node consists of a solar panel, an energy charging/discharging circuit and a SenStick, an existing sensor node including 8 different types of sensors and BLE communication interface. We demonstrate that the proposed EH sensor node works in an indoor environment by harvesting power from indoor lights, periodically measuring sensor data (temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, UV, and illuminance) and by sending the data by BLE communication. The received information is visualized through a web application running on a PC.