Abstract
Sensing has been obsessed with delivering on the “smart dust” vision outlined decades ago, where trillions of tiny invisible computers support daily life, infrastructure, and humanity in general. Batteries are the single greatest threat to this vision of a sustainable Internet of Things. They are expensive, bulky, hazardous, and wear out after a few years (even rechargeables). Replacing and disposing of billions or trillions of dead batteries per year would be expensive and irresponsible. By leaving the batteries behind and surviving off energy harvested from the environment, tiny intermittently powered computers can monitor objects in hard to reach places maintenance free for decades. The intermittent execution, constrained compute and energy resources, and unreliability of these devices creates new challenges for the sensing and embedded systems community. However, the rewards and potential impact across many fields are worth it, enabling currently impractical applications in health services and patient care, commercial and consumer applications, wildlife conservation, industrial and infrastructure management, even space exploration. This paper highlights major research questions and establishes new directions for the community to embrace and investigate.
Original language | English (US) |
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Title of host publication | SenSys 2017 - Proceedings of the 15th ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems |
Editors | Rasit Eskicioglu |
Publisher | Association for Computing Machinery, Inc |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9781450354592 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Nov 6 2017 |
Event | 15th ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems, SenSys 2017 - Delft, Netherlands Duration: Nov 6 2017 → Nov 8 2017 |
Publication series
Name | SenSys 2017 - Proceedings of the 15th ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems |
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Volume | 2017-January |
Conference
Conference | 15th ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems, SenSys 2017 |
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Country/Territory | Netherlands |
City | Delft |
Period | 11/6/17 → 11/8/17 |
Funding
This research is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under grant CNS-1453607. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation
Keywords
- Batteryless
- Energy harvesting
- Intermittent
- Sensing
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Control and Systems Engineering
- Electrical and Electronic Engineering
- Computer Networks and Communications