Читать книгу Indoor Photovoltaics - Группа авторов - Страница 16

In 2018, McKinsey identified 104 use cases for IoT applications in 11 sectors with 3000 companies actively working on them [1]. The authors reported a potential market value of $200 billion USD until 2025, and trillions of IoT edge nodes are expected to be installed worldwide in the near future. At the same time, many nations have set ambitious goals in order to reduce the amount of required electric energy.

How do we want to supply edge nodes with energy? A promising approach is the use of ambient energy in order to power electronic systems. This concept is also known as micro energy harvesting. The following chapter introduces micro energy harvesting and its history, the challenges in its design and future work ahead. Different sources of energy and available conversion mechanisms are discussed. The aim of this chapter is to set indoor photovoltaics in the broader frame of Micro Energy Harvesting in general. An introduction to conversion principles, achievable output power, and literature suggestions for further reading are provided for each type of converter. The principles of miniaturized and indoor photovoltaic devices are the core topic of this book with a general discussion of the theoretical foundations in Chapter 3.