In a battery-powered, wireless sensing node, the biggest energy consumer typically is the RF transmitter. The transceiver should have extremely low power in active, wait and even sleep modes. A one-second snapshot of the current consumption in the various portions of the transmission cycle shows the current draw of 15 mA for the 7.5-ms receive…

Wireless applications that need continuous monitoring to save energy, detect unsafe or other avoidable conditions and need to avoid creating serious maintenance issues are prime candidates for energy harvesting.  Steam trap monitoring provides an excellent example of this type of batteryless sensing.  Roughly 20% of the steam leaving a typical facility’s central boiler plant in space […]