Kofi Sarpong Adu-Manu

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Optimizing Energy Harvesting from RF Sources and Energy Transfer for Wireless Sensor Networks

Water is essential for human survival. While approximately 71% of the world is covered in water, only 2.5% of this is fresh water; hence fresh water is a valuable resource that must be carefully monitored and maintained. In developing countries, 80% of people are without access to potable water. Cholera is still reported in over 50 countries. In Africa, 75% of the drinking
water comes from underground sources that makes water monitoring an issue of key concern, as water monitoring can be used to track water quality changes over time, to identify existing or
emerging problems and to design effective intervention programs to remedy water pollution. It is important to have detailed knowledge of potable water quality to enable proper treatment and
also prevent contamination. Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are crucial in supporting continuous environmental monitoring, where sensor nodes are deployed and must remain operational to collect and transfer data from the environment to a base-station for processing. However, sensor nodes have limited energy in their primary power storage unit, and this energy may be quickly drained if the sensor node remains operational over long periods of time. Therefore, the idea of harvesting ambient energy from the immediate surroundings of the deployed sensors, to recharge the batteries and to directly power the sensor nodes, is presented. Energy harvested by sensor nodes can maintain the sensor network indefinitely and hence greatly improve data collection. The design of protocols that can take advantage of the harvested energy are also presented.

Keywords:

Wireless sensor networks, energy harvesting, energy transfer, self-powered devices, environmental monitoring, water quality