ECo-Harvester Project Kick-off

Ilmenau/Villingen-Schwenningen, 16.02.2021. The Hahn-Schickard-Gesellschaft für angewandte Forschung e.V. and the IMMS Institut für Mikroelektronik- und Mechatronik-Systeme gemeinnützige GmbH (IMMS GmbH) started the work in the three-year DFG research project "ECo-Harvester - Design Methodology for the Co-Design of Mechanical Structure and Interface Circuitry of Electrodynamic Energy Harvesters" in the virtual kick-off meeting on February 15, 2021.

Energy harvesters convert ambient energy into electrical energy in order to operate, for example, energy-autonomous wireless sensor nodes for monitoring tasks in industrial environments and to minimize the necessary maintenance and installation costs. Energy harvesters thus have great potential to become a key technology for the decentralized distribution of sensor applications.

In the research project "ECo-Harvester", a computer-aided design methodology for the co-design of mechanics and electronics for electrodynamic vibration harvesters is to be developed in order to be able to derive the optimal harvesting system depending on given requirements. "We do not want to simply assemble two components, but aim for an overall system design. The optimum of the overall system is not always the optimum of the subsystems," explained Prof. Dr. Ralf Sommer, scientific director of the IMMS. This overall system view is necessary in order to increase the efficiency of the system, i.e. to deliver more power or to be able to build smaller with the same power, Sommer continued. Such an approach expands the state of the art, as currently the components are often developed separately from each other.

The IMMS will focus on mechanical modeling including magnetic fields and mechanical damping of the energy harvesters, which are used to extract energy from vibrations. Hahn-Schickard will focus on the front-end circuits with high efficiency or low losses in order to provide the energy from the harvester mechanics in a suitable form for sensor systems. "However, since both partners are primarily looking at the interaction of harvester design and interface circuitry beyond their main areas of focus, we can take advantage of synergy effects," said Dr.-Ing. Thorsten Hehn, group manager for electronic systems at Hahn-Schickard. By means of appropriate modeling, an optimal overall concept can be generated from the topologies for the harvester and the interface circuit, including parameter determination, for given framework conditions, such as signal shape, frequency and amplitude of the excitation, size of the harvester, etc. This not only enables a cost-effective design of the harvester and the interface circuit, but also makes it possible to reduce the cost of the harvester. The challenges lie in the fact that there are a large number of basic topological structures on the mechanical side and, for example, many voltage ranges on the electronic side," summarized Hehn. "The exciting question is what is best for the overall system. We look forward to the answers we will deliver together."