The severe constraints imposed by limited battery life on applications such as remote unattended sensing has led to a ever-growing interest in realizing perpetually-powered, batteryless embedded systems powered by ambient energy sources. Depending upon the application, the design of such systems is challenged by variability in environment as well as small harvested-power availability. Increasing efficiency of harvesters while minimizing losses in energy conversion/storage is only a partial solution; to achieve true perpetual operation these systems need to be adaptive to harvested-energy availability.
The research under this topic focuses upon advancing the state-of-the-art in realization of harvested-energy awareness at a system-level. This involves developing and/or optimizing modules that enable low overhead energy monitoring and prediction while taking into account the limitations inherent in energy harvesting and storage components in a system. These modules are key building blocks for implementing robust energy-harvesting powered systems that feature graceful degradation user requirements with harvested-energy availability.