This article was 1st published on our sister Site, The Internet Of All Things.
Like any electronic device, smart devices, too, suffer from one common malaise – power. Operation under tightly constrained energy sources is still a challenge.
Currently, batteries in the Internet of Things (IoT) devices are much larger and up to three times more expensive than the single chip they power. Their size is determined by the sensor node lifetime, which directly affects how often they need to be changed. This has an important bearing on maintenance cost and impact on the environment when batteries are disposed. To extend the overall lifetime, the battery is usually recharged slowly by harvesting some limited power from the environment, such as using a solar cell. However, existing IoT devices cannot operate without battery, and small batteries are fully discharged more frequently. Hence, battery miniaturisation often results in highly discontinuous operation of IoT devices, as they stop functioning every time the battery runs out of energy.
Photo caption: Associate Professor Massimo Alioto (centre) and his team have developed a smart microchip, ‘BATLESS’.
This team of engineers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) has developed ‘BATLESS’, designed with a novel power management technique that allows it to self-start and continue to function under dim light without any battery assistance, using a very small on-chip solar cell. This research breakthrough substantially reduces the size of batteries required to power IoT sensor nodes, making them 10 times smaller and cheaper to produce. The breakthrough has been presented at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) 2018 in San Francisco, USA.
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