Hochschule Karlsruhe Hochschule Karlsruhe - University of Applied Sciences
Hochschule Karlsruhe Hochschule Karlsruhe - University of Applied Sciences

Energy Harvesting - Research Topics

New energy harvesting concepts

There are a variety of possibilities. However, in order to develop applicable concepts, a systemic approach is always required that not only focuses on energy provision, but also takes all other aspects into account. This research area is about investigating and researching new harvesting methods and developing target-oriented overall systemic concepts for a given application.

Adaptive and energy-adapted load management and duty cycling

In many use cases, it is clear that there are strong limitations on the energy generation side. Energy-autonomous solutions must therefore always have a strong focus on the consumption side. If only the power that is currently needed is ever called up in a use case, the average energy consumption can be drastically reduced without any significant loss in performance. This presupposes that the systems are able to adapt dynamically and adaptively to different load scenarios.

Intelligent and energy-efficient use of resources in distributed microsystems.

Energy harvesting is particularly useful when many wireless devices are interconnected in a network. A conventional energy supply often becomes unattractive for reasons of cost or it scales significantly worse. In addition to duty cycling on the device itself, resources available in a network can be used more intelligently in terms of energy. In a distributed system e.g. energy-intensive computing operations can be outsourced to those areas where a lot of energy is available. This implies that the design and topology take energy considerations into account in order to optimize the overall performance of the distributed system. Algorithmic aspects are also of interest, since the selection and implementation of arithmetic operations can have a significant influence on energy consumption.

Cost-efficient and durable power supply for sensors and actuators in digital applications

The power supply is one of the main cost drivers for extremely cost-efficient sensors and actuators. Particularly in digital applications that are to be retrofitted with new sensor technology, there is usually no power supply infrastructure or it can only be retrofitted at great expense. In this research area, the aim is to find the optimum power supply solutions under given requirements that represent the best solution when the entire life cycle is taken into account.