• Journal of Semiconductor Engineering
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.13-30
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• 2020

Radio frequency (RF) energy harvesting technology have become a reliable and promising alternative to extend the lifetime of power-constrained wireless networks by eliminating the need for batteries. This emerging technology enables the low-power wireless devices to be self-sustaining and eco-friendly by scavenging RF energy from ambient environment or dedicated energy sources. These attributes make RF energy harvesting technology feasible and attractive to an extended range of applications. However, despite being the most reliable energy harvesting technology, there are several challenges (especially power conversion efficiency, output DC voltage and sensitivity) poised for the implementation of RF energy harvesting systems. In this article, a detailed literature on RF energy harvesting technology has been surveyed to provide guidance for RF energy harvesters design. Since signal strength of the received RF power is limited and weak, high efficiency state-of-the-art RF energy harvesters are required to design for providing sufficient DC supply voltage to wireless networks. Therefore, various designs and their trade-offs with comprehensive analysis for RF energy harvesters have been discussed. This paper can serve as a good reference for the researchers to catch new research topics in the field of RF energy harvesting.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.69-74
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• 2015

Recently, energy harvesting technology is increasing due to the fossil fuel shortages. Energy harvesting is generating electrical energy from wasted energies as sunlight, wind, waves, pressure, and vibration etc. Energy harvesting is one of the alternatives of fossil fuel. One of the energy harvesting technologies, the piezoelectric energy harvesting has been actively studied. Piezoelectric generating uses a positive piezoelectric effect which produces electrical energy when mechanical vibration is applied to the piezoelectric device. Piezoelectric energy harvesting has an advantage in that it is relatively not affected by weather, area and place. Also, stable and sustainable energy generation is possible. However, the output power is relatively low, so in this paper, newly designed honeycomb shaped piezoelectric energy harvesting device for increasing a generating efficiency. The output characteristics of the piezoelectric harvesting device were analyzed according to the change of parameters by using the finite element method analysis program. One model which has high output voltage was selected and a prototype of the honeycomb shaped piezoelectric harvesting device was fabricated. Experimental results from the fabricated device were compared to the analyzed results. After the AC-DC converting, the power of one honeycomb shaped piezoelectric energy harvesting device was measured 2.3[mW] at road resistance 5.1[$K{\Omega}$]. And output power was increased the number of harvesting device when piezoelectric energy harvesting device were connected in series and parallel.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.1131-1138
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• 2015

This study presents an input-powered high-efficiency interface circuit for energy harvesting systems, and introduces a zero standby power design to reduce power consumption significantly while removing the external power supply. This interface circuit is composed of two stages. The first stage voltage doubler uses a positive feedback control loop to improve considerably the conversion speed and efficiency, and boost the output voltage. The second stage active diode adopts a common-grid operational amplifier (op-amp) to remove the influence of offset voltage in the traditional comparator, which eliminates leakage current and broadens bandwidth with low power consumption. The system supplies itself with the harvested energy, which enables it to enter the zero standby mode near the zero crossing points of the input current. Thereafter, high system efficiency and stability are achieved, which saves power consumption. The validity and feasibility of this design is verified by the simulation results based on the 65 nm CMOS process. The minimum input voltage is down to 0.3 V, the maximum voltage efficiency is 99.6% with a DC output current of 75.6 μA, the maximum power efficiency is 98.2% with a DC output current of 40.4 μA, and the maximum output power is 60.48 μW. The power loss of the entire interface circuit is only 18.65 μW, among which, the op-amp consumes only 2.65 μW.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
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• v.18 no.7
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• pp.48-55
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• 2019

Soldiers have been exposed to the risk of chilblains in cold winters. Recent studies have described sensors and IOT devices that use independent power sources based on piezoelectric energy harvesting. Therefore, the heated shoes with an independent power source have been developed. For the application of energy harvesting to shoes, it is necessary to develop a unique harvester by considering human gait characteristics. Energy harvesters and ceramics were designed and fabricated in this study. The performances of these harvesters and ceramics were evaluated experimentally. Then, the harvesters and ceramics with superior performance were selected and applied to the system. Thereafter, the heating and charging performance of the system was tested under real walking conditions. The results show that the developed system can generate adequate energy to charge the battery and heat the shoes.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.32 no.6
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• pp.383-391
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• 2023

Energy harvesting in trams may become a prevalent source of passive energy generation due to the high density of vibrational energy, and this may help power structural health monitoring systems for the trams. This paper presents a broadband vibrational energy harvesting device design that utilizes a varied frequency from a tram vehicle using a 2 DOF vibrational system combined with electromagnetic energy conversion. This paper will demonstrate stepwise optimization processes to determine mechanical parameters for frequency tuning to adjust to the trams' operational conditions, and electromagnetic parameters for the whole system design to maximize power output. The initial optimization will determine 5 important design parameters in a 2 DOF vibrational system, namely the masses (m₁, m₂ (and spring constants (k₁, k₂, k₃). The second step will use these parameters as initial guesses for the second optimization which will maintain the ratios of these parameters and present electrical parameters to maximize the power output from this system. The obtained values indicated a successful demonstration of design optimization as the average power generated increased from 1.475 mW to 17.44 mW (around 12 times).

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2010.03a
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• pp.7-7
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• 2010

Energy harvesting from the environment has been of great interest as a standalone power source of wireless sensor nodes for Ubiquitous Sensor Networks(USN). In particular, the piezoelectric energy harvesting from ambient vibration sources has intensively researched because it has a relatively high power density comparing with other energy scavenging methods. Through recent advances in low power consumption RF transmitters and sensors, it is possible to adopt a micro-power energy harvesting system realized by MEMS technology for the system-on-chip. However, the MEMS energy harvesting system has some drawbacks such as a high natural frequency over 300 Hz and a small power generation due to a small dimension. To overcome these limitations, we devised a novel power generator with a spiral spring structure as shown in the figure. The natural frequency of a cantilever could be decreased to the usable frequency region (under 300 Hz) because the natural frequency depends on the length of a cantilever. In this study, the natural frequency of the energy harvester was a lower than a normal cantilever structure and sufficiently controllable in 50 - 200 Hz frequency region as adjusting weight of a proof mass. Moreover, the MEMS energy harvester had a high energy conversion efficiency using a shear mode ($d_{15}$) is much larger than a 33 mode ($d_{33}$) and the energy conversion efficiency is proportional to the piezoelectric constant (d). We expect the spiral type MEMS power generator would be a good candidate for a standalone power generator for USN.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.40 no.10
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• pp.1922-1930
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• 2015

This paper presents the system design, implement, and measurement results of the testbed for the wireless RF energy harvesting system. The developed testbed can be used for RF power transfer and data communication using the 2.4 GHz and 900 MHz frequency bands. It allows to evaluate the system performances for the RF power and data transmission. The testbed can also be used to develop algorithms for efficient energy harvesting.

• Journal of Communications and Networks
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.340-350
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• 2016

The performance of large-scale cognitive radio (CR) networks with secondary users sustained by opportunistically harvesting radio-frequency (RF) energy from nearby primary transmissions is investigated. Using an advanced RF energy harvester, a secondary user is assumed to be able to collect ambient primary RF energy as long as it lies inside the harvesting zone of an active primary transmitter (PT). A variable power (VP) transmission mode is proposed, and an energy-based opportunistic spectrum access (OSA) strategy is considered, under which a secondary transmitter (ST) is allowed to transmit only if its harvested energy is larger than a predefined transmission threshold and it is outside the guard zones of all active PTs. The transmission probability of the STs is derived. The outage probabilities and the throughputs of the primary and the secondary networks, respectively, are characterized. Compared with prior work, the throughput can be increased by as much as 29%. The energy-based OSA strategy can be generally applied to a non-CR setup, where distributed power beacons (PBs) are deployed to power coexisting wireless signal transmitters (WSTs) in a wireless powered sensor network.

• Journal of electromagnetic engineering and science
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.6-11
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• 2008

Advances in low power design open the possibility to harvest energy from the environment to power electronic circuits. Electrical energy can be harvested from piezoelectric transducer. Piezoelectric materials can be used as mechanisms to transfer mechanical energy usually vibrating system into electrical energy that can be stored and used to power other devices. Micro- to milli-watts power can be generated from vibrating system. We developed definitive and analytical models to predict the power generated from a cantilever beam attached with piezoelectric transducer. Analytical models are pin-force method, enhanced pin-force method and Euler-Bernoulli method. Harmonic oscillations and random noise will be the two different forcing functions used to drive each system. It has been selected the best model for generating electric power based upon the analytical results obtained.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.33-46
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• 1978

To get the goal of self-supply of food grain, improvement of post-harvest grain operations in rural area is under consideration as an important task of agriculture in Korea. This is study is focused on elimination of losses and deteriorations of grain and reduction of labour requirements and funds for post-harvest grain operations. The purpose of this study are presentation of basic data referring to conventional post-harvest grain operations in rural area and suggestion of improving methods for the operations, and also finding out reasonable operating processes of the operations. The result of this study are follows; 1. Grain drying in-the-filed which is performed before threshing has major factors of grain loss during drying, and so should be restrained as possible. Combine harvesting system is recommended among other king of mechanized harvesting systems for restraining in-the-field drying and securing available labors for drying. 2. It is predicted that mechanical grain drying could be prevalent when combine harvesting is taken place. Recommended grain drier for pre-combine harvesting system and for combine harvesting system is batch-type drier and circulating -type drier, respectively. 3. As existing farm storages for grain have insufficient spaces and offer poor conditions for grain storing , it is greatly needed to build up new storage which store only grains. And it is concluded that storing grain in community common storages in desirable. 4. Power supplying system for milling machinery in local milling plants, that a large capacity prime mover supplies power to 4 to 6 kinds of milling machinery simultaeously, should be converted to a system of several small capacity prime movers supplying power to each machiner y for the purpose of reducing extra consumption of energy. 5. Governmental grain, of which Korean farms produced, should be milled and stored in the local milling plant successively for the purpose of reducing transportation fee and stroing facilities. 6. Furture post-havest grain operations-drying, storing and milling should be periormed successively in he community common plant. And average optimum processing capacity of the plant is estimated about 300 metric ton of grain every year.