A Wireless Sensor Network Based Solar Powered Harvesting System for Aquaculture

Despite improvements in battery technology and declines in electronics power demands, many new applications in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are taking into account increasing power requirements. Furthermore, since in WSNs it is frequently desirable to deploy nodes in unobtainable places, it might be impossible to provide large enough power for such applications given the fact that battery replacement is not practicable. This results in significant interests in designing sensor nodes with the capability of extracting electrical energy from surrounding ambient sources. The ultimate goal of this research is to achieve a perpetually powered system without a necessary periodical maintenance for battery replacement or recharging. The energy harvesting system developed for this research has been experimentally verified and can increase the lifetime of an entire network to reach that of its individual hardware components. We realized a maximum power point tracking (MPPT) algorithm that could switch power source according to light conditions to ensure the continuous stable operation.