EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS OF PIEZOELECTRIC BENDER GENERATORS FOR THE ENERGY SUPPLY OF SMART WIRELESS SENSORS

Energy harvesting or energy scavenging systems (e.g. piezoelectric, electrostatic, electromagnetic, solar cells, etc.) have raised in the last years an increasing interest to their use as power supply sources for electronic systems, particularly for wireless devices. The use of such systems, furthermore, is the key in environments where batteries cannot be used, e.g. tire of an automobile. The goal of our work is to design and implement an integrated power management system to optimize the power/energy transfer from the energy scavenging device to the power supply of an embedded smart wireless sensor. We focus our research activity on vibration-based energy harvesting generators, in particular on thin film piezoelectric cantilevers. In this work, we present the results of the on the road experimental tests, made with a Piezoelectric Bender Generator (PBG), mounted on a board, in turn, mounted onto the wheel of a car. With our work we assess the feasibility of using PBGs as power supply source of Wireless Tire Pressure Measurement Systems (TPMS).