New-Tech Europe | June 2017

Embedded Solutions Special Edition

Going batteryless: How to create the next generation of industrial and IoT devices

Scott Soong, Pervasive Displays

Embedded summit badgeToday Given that many Internet of Things (IoT) implementations seek to remotely deploy large numbers of devices, one of the biggest challenges is power. With mains often unavailable, the IoT devices must run off batteries and use as little power as possible. But even this is imperfect: batteries eventually run out and must be replaced or recharged. There’s also the complexity of needing to monitor charge levels, to avoid downtime caused by dead batteries. What if it was possible to eliminate these challenges, and create a way of perpetually powering IoT devices? It may sound like the stuff of sci-fi, but there are now ways of harvesting energy that are sufficient to power a useful IoT device. Toppan Printing Co. Ltd., for example, recently vision

Everything from our laptops to our smartphones and wearables runs off batteries. Plugging these devices in overnight has become part of our routines – a small price to pay for the advantages of cord-free use. In the same way consumer electronics have gone wireless, so have industrial devices, thereby paving the way for the IoT. We can now roll out large numbers of sensors and other kit in remote locations, without worrying about power or network cabling. But this creates a new challenge. Keeping our consumer device batteries charged is workable because there are usually only a few pieces of kit, and they’re not usually critical to our existence (if you can’t check your personal social media accounts for a few hours, it’s not the end of the world).

announced its batteryless e-paper display (EPD) with a built-in RFID tag – all powered using harvested RF energy. By designing the device correctly and using the right energy-harvesting method, it’s perfectly feasible to create batteryless devices that can run near-enough forever. For those buying and deploying these devices, the overheads associated with maintaining a large fleet of battery- powered devices are eliminated. Let’s look at the IoT power challenge – and how to solve it – in more detail. The problem with battery-powered devices in the IoT age Batteries are key to our modern, wireless ways of living and working.

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