• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.4 no.5
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• pp.549-563
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• 2008

The ability of an electroactive polymer, IPMC (Ionic Polymer Metal Composites,) to produce electric charge under mechanical deformations may be exploited for the development of next generation of energy harvesters. Two different electrode types (gold and platinum) were employed for the experiments. The sample was tested under dynamic conditions, produced through programmed shaking. In order to evaluate the potential of IPMC for dry condition, these samples were treated with ionic liquid. Three modes of mechanical deformations (bending, tension and shear) were analyzed. Experimental results clearly indicate that IPMCs are attractive applicants for energy harvesting, with inherent advantages like flexibility, low cost, negligible maintenance and virtually infinite longevity. Besides, preliminary energy harvesting model of IPMC has been formulated based upon the work of previous investigators (Newbury 2002, Newbury and Leo 2002, Lee, et al. 2005, Konyo, et al. 2004) and the simulation results reciprocate experimental results within acceptable error.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.30 no.12
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• pp.1341-1347
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• 2013

Energy harvesting is a clean technology to obtain energy from the surrounding environment such as wind, sun, vibration and so on. In particular, the current TPMS (Tire Pressure Monitoring Device) is very small and attached to the outside of a vehicle and power supply of the TPMS is limited. Therefore, energy harvesting using vibration energy of piezoelectric materials is important to the TPMS. In this paper, we analyzed several models using ANSYS which is one of the FEA (Finite Element Analysis) package and compared corresponding strain frequency response functions of the TPMS. In addition, we confirmed that dynamic characteristics variations according to geometry changes have effects on the performance of the TPMS.

• IEMEK Journal of Embedded Systems and Applications
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.79-86
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• 2016

In wireless sensor networks, increasing the sensing rate of each node to improve the data accuracy usually incurs a decrease of network lifetime. In this study, an energy-adaptive data compression scheme is proposed to efficiently control the sensing rate in an energy-harvesting wireless sensor network (WSN). In the proposed scheme, by utilizing the surplus energy effectively for the data compression, each node can increase the sensing rate without any rise of blackout time. Simulation result verifies that the proposed scheme gathers more amount of sensory data per unit time with lower number of blackout nodes than the other compression schemes for WSN.

• Journal of Communications and Networks
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.169-178
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• 2012

In this paper, we study the advantages of using range extension cooperative transmission (CT) in multi-hop energy harvesting wireless sensor networks (EH-WSNs) from the network layer perspective. EH-WSNs rely on harvested energy, and therefore, if a required service is energy-intensive, the network may not be able to support the service successfully. We show that CT networks that utilize both range extension CT and non-CT routing can successfully support services that cannot be supported by non-CT networks. For a two-hop toy network, we show that range extension CT can provide better services than non-CT. Then, we provide a method of determining the supportable services that can be achieved by using optimal non-CT and CT routing protocols for EH-WSNs. Using our method and network simulations, we justify our claim that CT networks can provide better services than nonCT networks in EH-WSNs.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.60 no.3
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• pp.560-565
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• 2011

This paper proposes the design of micro energy harvesting system by using thermoplastic polyurethane(TPU), which harvests electric energy from the kinetic energy of pedestrian and drives the desired load, and applied it to the self-generating shoes. Also, we designed the buck-boost converter in discontinuous conduction mode(DCM) which functions as a resistor emulator(RE) such that converter's average input current is proportional to input voltage, and it results in transfer of maximum power to buck-boost converter according to control behavior that converter's input resistance is matched with TPU's internal resistance. Therefore, this paper confirms the validity of proposed control scheme and possibility of application for self-generating shoes, from the obtained characteristic of designed micro energy harvesting system by using a TPU and buck-boost converter in DCM.

• 한국연소학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2015.12a
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• pp.323-323
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• 2015

In recent years, increasing concerns of environmental issues of global warming and limitations of conventional energy resources have resulted in extensive researches into energy harvesting from unused energy. Thermoelectric generation (TEG) is a promising technology for waste heat to power, and various kinds of applications are possible if a waste heat source meets the requirements of TEG operation. In terms of commercialization, economic feasibility is important for an emerging technology like TEG. In this study, economic analysis was conducted for the application of TEG on various sources of waste heat.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.34 no.6
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• pp.495-504
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• 2021

Energy Harvesting is a technology that can convert wasted energy such as vibration, heat, light, electromagnetic energy, etc. into usable electrical energy. Among them, vibration-based piezoelectric energy harvesting (PEH) has high energy conversion efficiency with a small volume; thus, it is expected to be used in various autonomous powering devices, such as implantable medical devices, wearable devices, and energy harvesting from road or automobiles. In this study, wasted vibration energy in an automobile is converted into electrical energy by high-power piezoelectric materials, and the generated electrical energy is found to be an auxiliary power source for the operation of wireless sensor nodes, LEDs, etc. inside an automobile. In order to properly install the PEH in an automobile, vibration characteristics includes frequency and amplitude at several positions in the automobile is monitored initially and the cantilever structured PEH was designed accordingly. The harvesting properties of fabricated PEH is characterized and installed into the engine part of the automobile, where the vibration amplitude is stable and strong. The feasibility of PEH is confirmed by operating electric components (LEDs) that can be used in practice.

• Ceramist
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.56-69
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• 2019

Recent advances in low-power sensors and transmitters are driving the search for standalone power sources that utilize unused ambient energy. These energy harvesters can alleviate the issues related to the installation and maintenance of sensors. Particularly piezoelectric energy harvesters, with the ability to convert ambient mechanical energy into useful electricity, have received significant attention due to their high energy density, low cost and operational stability over wide temperature and pressure conditions. In order to maximize the generated electrical power, the natural frequency of the piezoelectric energy harvester should be matched with the dominant frequency of ambient vibrations. However, piezoelectric energy harvesters typically exhibit a narrow bandwidth, thus, it becomes difficult to operate near resonance under broadband ambient vibration conditions. Therefore, the resonating of energy harvesters is critical to generate maximum output power under ambient vibration conditions. For this, energy harvesters should have broadband natural frequency or actively tunable natural frequency with ambient vibrations. Here, we review the most plausible broadband energy harvesting techniques of the multi-resonance, nonlinearity, and self-resonance tuning. The operation mechanisms and recent representative studies of each technique are introduced and the advantages and disadvantages of each method are discussed. In addition, we look into the future research direction for the broadband energy harvester.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.611-625
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• 2018

With innovative advances in wireless communication technology, many researches for extending network lifetime in maximum by using energy harvesting have been actively performed on the area of network resource optimization, QoS-guaranteed transmission, energy-intelligent routing and etc. As known well, it is very hard to guarantee end-to-end network delay due to uncertainty of the amount of harvested energy in multi-hop RF(radio frequency) energy harvesting wireless networks. To minimize end-to-end delay in multi-hop RF energy harvesting networks, this paper proposes an energy efficient routing metric based on interference aware and protocol which takes account of various delays caused by co-channel interference, energy harvesting time and queuing in a relay node. The proposed method maximizes end-to-end throughput by performing avoidance of packet congestion causing load unbalance, reduction of waiting time due to exhaustion of energy and restraint of delay time from co-channel interference. Finally simulation results using ns-3 simulator show that the proposed method outperforms existing methods in respect of throughput, end-to-end delay and energy consumption.

• International Journal of Highway Engineering
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.159-166
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• 2011

Green house gas emissions are increasing as development of the industrial economy of the international community. Many countries in the world are endeavoring to reduce green house gas emissions under severe climate change. In order to protect grobal warming, government is trying to reduce green gas emissions under "Low Carbon Green Growth Policy" and investing climiate-firendly industries such as renewable energy harvesting. Renewable energy has been rapidly developing as a result of investment for development technology of using natural energy such as solar, wind, tidal, etc. There are lots of waste energy in the road space. However, nobody is not interested in waste energy from the road space. This paper present a fundamentally experimental study of energy harvesting technique to use waste energy in the road. The waste energy in the road is covered a pressure and impact of vehicles on the road, the radiant heat from asphalt pavement, road noise and vibration etc. In this study, an energy harvesting device using piezoelectric element is proposed and various tests are conducted to investigate a characteristic of this device as function of impact loading based on piezoelectric effect behavior. This paper shows the energy harvesting results of the device using domestic piezoelectirc element as a function of impact load size and pavement types.