title: A Terrestrial Microbial Fuel Cell for Powering a Single-Hop Wireless Sensor Network.
abstract: Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) are envisioned as one of the most promising alternative renewable energy sources because they can generate electric current continuously while treating waste. Terrestrial Microbial Fuel Cells (TMFCs) can be inoculated and work on the use of soil, which further extends the application areas of MFCs. Energy supply, as a primary influential factor determining the lifetime of Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) nodes, remains an open challenge in sensor networks. In theory, sensor nodes powered by MFCs have an eternal life. However, low power density and high internal resistance of MFCs are two pronounced problems in their operation. A single-hop WSN powered by a TMFC experimental setup was designed and experimented with. Power generation performance of the proposed TMFC, the relationships between the performance of the power generation and the environment temperature, the water content of the soil by weight were measured by experiments. Results show that the TMFC can achieve good power generation performance under special environmental conditions. Furthermore, the experiments with sensor data acquisition and wireless transmission of the TMFC powering WSN were carried out. We demonstrate that the obtained experimental results validate the feasibility of TMFCs powering WSNs.
authors.affiliation: School of Mechano-Electronic Engineering, Xidian University, Xi'an 710071, China. zhangdx@xidian.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Daxing
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: School of Mechano-Electronic Engineering, Xidian University, Xi'an 710071, China. ymzhu@xidian.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Yingmin
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.affiliation: School of Mechano-Electronic Engineering, Xidian University, Xi'an 710071, China. wpedrycz@ualberta.ca.|Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB T6G 2R3, Canada. wpedrycz@ualberta.ca.|Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah 21589, Saudi Arabia. wpedrycz@ualberta.ca.
authors.forename: Witold
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Pedrycz
authors.affiliation: Institute of Engineering Thermophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China. guoyongxian@iet.cn.
authors.forename: Yongxian
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Guo
mesh_terms: D001673:Biodegradation, Environmental; D001674:Bioelectric Energy Sources / Q000382:microbiology*; D059015:Wireless Technology
keywords: energy harvesting; power management; terrestrial microbial fuel cell; wireless sensor network