Research Issues in Energy Harvesting Internet of Things

Recent advancements in renewable energy systems, power electronics, wireless communication and Internet of Things (IoT) are combined into to a new concept known as energy harvesting IoT (EH-IoT). The new IEEE P2413 standard [1] allows the use of energy harvesting feature into the existing IoT infrastructure. The silicon solar photovoltaic (PV) cells produce energy of few milli-watts (similar to 15mW/cm(2)), which can drive sensors, low-power microcontrollers and RF transmitters for a complete self powered wireless embedded system. In this paper, we present open research issues, possible solutions, recent technologies &present state of the art of EH-IoT. We divide the research issues into four broad areas of research in EH-IoT, i.e. sensing, computations, communications, and energy harvesting. The biggest challenge in EH-IoT is designing of suitable energy harvester circuits, dynamic power management and development of energy-efficient communication protocols. This paper is useful for researchers, and design engineers for identifying the various state of the art parameters, problems and design solutions in the field of EH-IoT.