Harvesting Solar Energy for Limited-Energy Problem in Wireless Sensor Networks

The major problem in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is the limited-energy source, typically small batteries, employed by sensors. In order to prolong the lifetime of the WSNs, a lot of approaches have taken the limited-energy problem as a primarily design criterion. However, inevitable energy depletion will eventually disturb the operation of the WSNs. Recent studies have shown that renewable energy sources would potentially provide an infinite energy source for powering WSNs. Solar energy is the most effective energy source for WSNs as it has the largest power intensity. Therefore, each sensor which requires a small amount of energy for efficient operation can harvest sufficient energy from solar. In this study, a platform is designed in order to allow sensors to exploit solar energy. The performance of the sensors in terms of the lifetime is practically studied. The results demonstrate that sensors can also survive when there is no energy available through storing energy in a super-capacitor. IRIS nodes are used in experiments as they are very popular in WSNs domain.