Mitcheson Paul D
Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Imperial college London, UK.
Annu Int Conf IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc. 2010;2010:3432-6. doi: 10.1109/IEMBS.2010.5627952.
There are clear trade-offs between functionality, battery lifetime and battery volume for wearable and implantable wireless-biosensors which energy harvesting devices may be able to overcome. Reliable energy harvesting has now become a reality for machine condition monitoring and is finding applications in chemical process plants, refineries and water treatment works. However, practical miniature devices that can harvest sufficient energy from the human body to power a wireless bio-sensor are still in their infancy. This paper reviews the options for human energy harvesting in order to determine power availability for harvester-powered body sensor networks. The main competing technologies for energy harvesting from the human body are inertial kinetic energy harvesting devices and thermoelectric devices. These devices are advantageous to some other types as they can be hermetically sealed. In this paper the fundamental limit to the power output of these devices is compared as a function of generator volume when attached to a human whilst walking and running. It is shown that the kinetic energy devices have the highest fundamental power limits in both cases. However, when a comparison is made between the devices using device effectivenesses figures from previously demonstrated prototypes presented in the literature, the thermal device is competitive with the kinetic energy harvesting device when the subject is running and achieves the highest power density when the subject is walking.
对于可穿戴和植入式无线生物传感器而言，在功能、电池寿命和电池体积之间存在明显的权衡，而能量收集装置或许能够克服这些问题。可靠的能量收集现已成为机器状态监测的现实，并正在化学加工厂、炼油厂和水处理厂中得到应用。然而，能够从人体收集足够能量以为无线生物传感器供电的实用微型设备仍处于起步阶段。本文综述了人体能量收集的各种选择，以确定为基于能量收集器的人体传感器网络供电的可用功率。从人体收集能量的主要竞争技术是惯性动能收集装置和热电装置。这些装置比其他一些类型的装置更具优势，因为它们可以进行气密密封。本文比较了这些装置在附着于人体行走和跑步时作为发电机体积的函数的功率输出基本极限。结果表明，在这两种情况下，动能装置都具有最高的基本功率极限。然而，当使用文献中先前展示的原型的设备效率数据对这些装置进行比较时，当受试者跑步时，热装置与动能收集装置具有竞争力，而当受试者行走时，热装置实现最高的功率密度。
