Cubed energy harvester offers six-sided solution to IoT power challenge

Now, a team at KAUST (King Abdullah University of Science and Technology) in Saudi Arabia proposes an inexpensive energy harvester that could recharge these Internet-connected smart devices using radio waves from wireless sources.

One way that researchers are miniaturising devices for IoT applications is through the system-on-package approach, which places entire systems onto a single chip-size package.

According to KAUST, recent work has shown that the protective packaging around microelectronic devices could accommodate components, such as antennas, for significantly reduced costs and space requirements.

Atif Shamim, a professor of electrical engineering, realised that system-on-package principles could help IoT devices become more self-sufficient. His team investigated strategies to build highly compact antennas that tune into the radiofrequency signals emitted from mobile and wireless devices. They then teamed up with Khaled Salama’s group at KAUST to convert this energy into electricity using semiconductor diodes.

Most radiofrequency harvesters can only utilise a single part of the wireless spectrum, such as the 3G standard but Shamim’s team produced a multiband device that can accumulate more energy from multiple sources of communication.