Wireless Sensor Networks and Energy Harvesting Standards

Wireless Sensor Networks and Energy Harvesting Standards

By Raghu Das, CEO, IDTechEx

The potentially huge market for wireless sensor networks (WSN) that could involve billions of sensors needed on trees for forest fires, utility assets, buildings, pollution monitors and much more is being enabled by energy harvesters, new energy storage solutions and new ultra low power electronics. This can realize twenty year life sensors with no maintenance which is a typical target specification for the biggest potential applications. However, critically, these systems need to be appropriately standardized for the industry to move beyond niche applications. The standardization involves those making the various forms of energy harvesters – such as piezoelectric, thermoelectric and photovoltaic, to the new low power circuitry to wireless protocols. Standardization is being approached from these different angles.

The ZigBee Alliance announced in July 2009 that it will draft a standard for energy harvesting devices. ZigBee is a short range wireless protocol that uses less power than alternatives such as WiFi and Bluetooth but it has two limitations for energy harvesting – so far many devices are interoperable and secondly, the power consumed is still often too high for most of the potential in Wireless Sensor Networks WSN where energy harvesting is needed. For this reason, other, lower power standards have gained traction in WSN as detailed in the IDTechEx report Wireless Sensor Networks 2009-2019 (www.IDTechEx.com/wsn). These other standards organizations in Europe and the USA are progressing standards that encompass such things as piezoelectric and vibration harvesting.

Here the only major success has been the EnOcean Alliance with about 150 companies involved with interoperable devices, mainly for use in buildings, and well over 500,000 of them installed.

ZigBee

ZigBee is already the leading standard for parts of the smart grid and the in-building wireless network market, and it already has the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) seal of approval. Almost all ZigBee applications rely on batteries. This is why the ZigBee Alliance will amend its standard to work with more energy-harvesting devices, possibly even battery free ones.

EnOcean

The EnOcean Alliance, like the ZigBee Alliance, is a consortium of companies whose energy-harvesting standard, also like ZigBee, is open, interoperable with existing standards — from TCP/IP to ZigBee itself. EnOcean has applied to the IEC to become an official global standard for energy-harvesting devices and, following great success in Europe, has started to gain traction in North America, with manufacturers such as Masco Corporation, Philips and Osram Sylvania embracing its technology.

Argument

Not surprisingly, the ZigBee announcement has not been welcomed by the EnOcean Alliance. Even if ZigBee cannot lead to such low power long life devices, it can muddy the water and, in the view of EnOcean, perhaps infringe patents.

However, we are not necessarily seeing direct competition here. Zigbee Alliance is not standardizing or developing harvested energy techniques. It is only creating extensions to the existing ZigBee stack that would permit OEMs to use a greater selection of available energy-harvesting solutions. Both sides agree that you cannot get enough power from energy harvesting to do all of the things that make ZigBee ZigBee.

Bottom line

IDTechEx believes that energy harvesting can only become a multibillion dollar business if standards are created and interoperable equipment becomes more widely available. We see highest volume potential for multiple energy harvesting in single devices without batteries and offering twenty year life. For example, affordable, long-lived WSN networks with much more than 10,000 nodes are sorely needed.

These issues will be aired by all involved at the co-located Wireless Sensor Networks & RTLS and Energy Harvesting USA events in Denver Colorado 3-4 November. See www.IDTechEx.com/Denver for more information. EnOcean Alliance will present its case, and several companies present on their developments with ZigBee. Many energy harvesting companies and low power circuitry companies will be presenting, exhibiting and attending.

Particular emphasis will be on what the potentially large customers want. NASA, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, SPAWAR Systems Center San Diego, the US Navy, Adidas, BP, Hospital Corporation of America, GE Global Research and Texas Instruments are among those speaking. For full details see www.IDTechEx.com/Denver.

ENDS – 700 words

For more information on the topic please contact the author Raghu Das at R.Das@IDTechEx.com or to find out more about the event, contact the Event Manager Sarah Lee at S.Lee@IDTechEx.com.

IDTechEx Dates:

RFID Europe 2009 | Sep 29-30 | Cambridge, UK www.IDTechEx.com/RFIDeurope

Printed Electronics Asia 2009 | Sep 30-Oct 1 | Tokyo, Japan www.IDTechEx.com/peASIA

Energy Harvesting & Storage USA | Nov 3-4 | Denver, USA www.IDTechEx.com/ehUSA

RTLS & Wireless Sensor Networks Summit | Nov 3-4 | Denver, USA www.IDTechEx.com/wireless

Printed Electronics USA 2009 | Dec 2-3 | San Jose, USA www.IDTechEx.com/peUSA

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