How to solve the charging problem of Internet of Things (IoT) devices?

Do you live in a world where everything is highly intelligent and interconnected? Thousands of sensor networks are deployed in homes, offices, and factories to achieve better decision making, ensure personal safety, achieve greater automation, reduce costs, and increase everyone’s overall productivity and quality of life. . If your answer is yes, then the good news is that this world known as the "Internet of Things (IoT)" is just around the corner.

What is the Internet of Things? Conceptually we can understand that almost every "thing" (even other planets) on Earth will be given a unique address. This address helps each thing communicate and interact with all other things through the Internet.

At present, such "things" are defined as a device that can connect to the Internet. These devices include mobile phones, smart TVs, refrigerators, coffee machines, jet engines, nuclear reactors, and any other device that can be controlled by a power switch. In fact, the "things" that the Internet of Things can connect to are far more than that. As communication technologies, especially wireless technologies, are becoming more and more advanced, the "intelligence" of everything in the world has become an unstoppable trend. Although televisions, refrigerators and coffee machines have been available for many years, in recent years they have only begun to connect with the Internet. With the continuous advancement of technology, the “things” connected to the Internet in the future will be incalculable.

According to the report, as of February 2015, the number of devices connected to the Internet was about 14.8 billion units. By 2020, this figure will reach 50 billion.
IoT interconnected device growth forecast (picture from ZD Net.com)

As an emerging trend in technology development, the Internet of Things also brings many new opportunities and challenges for the semiconductor industry. How to power these connected devices has become a problem that every solution designer needs to face. Energy harvesting and wireless power technology can help achieve a small battery or battery-free solution while also avoiding the use of power cords.

Since the number of sensor nodes is usually as many as billions, the time and cost for replacing the battery are very large. Therefore, many wireless sensors must be able to self-power. Gathering energy from the surrounding environment is the preferred solution, or the battery replacement interval can be extended by increasing the capacity of the rechargeable storage device, even without replacing the battery. There is a wide variety of available sources of energy, including solar, thermal and vibrational energy, and even the use of surrounding radio frequency (RF) energy. TI's power management devices can support a wide range of collectors, memory, and load technologies to capture as much energy as possible from different sources of energy.

In addition, the Internet of Things also promotes new investments in semiconductors such as low-power electronics such as wearable devices. Although wearable devices have brought revolutionary changes to personal fitness, the different charging cables and connectors used by these miniature devices have also caused inconvenience to consumers. Wireless charging technology can not only eliminate these annoyances, but also improve the overall user experience. This is one of the reasons why this technology is gradually being widely adopted. According to Credit Suisse, the smart phone will become a "private cloud" for wearable devices over the next five years, and on average, each user will carry at least one or two such wearables with him. Technology research companies expect that by 2016, the wearable wireless device market will grow to 6 billion US dollars.

The reference circuits provided by the following five TI reference designs can help users to add small and efficient wireless power supply, battery charging and energy harvesting solutions to their applications. Check out the details, it's time to power your IoT device!

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