A battery-free, RF energy-powered and low power consuming wireless sensor module that offers humidity, temperature, and light level data at an access point, along with the Powercaster transmitter’s ID number and the received signal strength (RSSI), will be showcased by Powercast on June 7-9, 2010 at the Sensors Expo & Conference.
During the conference, Powercast’s Director of Marketing and Business Development, Harry Ostaffe will deliver two presentations. On June 10, 2010 at the pre-conference symposium, Ostaffe will deliver a talk related to the design techniques suitable for use in RF harvesting gadgets. He will speak at the main conference on extracting power from thin air through wireless sensors’s ambient RF energy harvesting.
Powercast wireless sensor module
Powercast has launched the P2110 and P1110 Powerharvester receivers recently. These receivers can transform the 850-950 MHz radio waves into DC power. The sensor module that will be demonstrated utilizes the P2110 for storing the energy received in a capacitor. This energy is then subjected to a voltage boost for supplying a regulated voltage to the module components.
Both the P2110 and the P1110 are able to empower a microcontroller to ascertain the received power’s signal strength and also extract the low-rate data that is encoded in the power transmitter’s transmitted power.
The leading low power MCUs vendor Microchip Technology has provided the hardware and software development support for the access point and the sensor module.
These gadgets utilize PIC microcontrollers feature XLP eXtreme low power expertise, IEEE 802.15.4 radio module that has been certified by the MRF24J40MA agency, and result in low power processing, high-performance and communications. The MiWi P2P protocol of Microchip offers the short-duration, dependable messaging for ensuring the harvesting system’s optimal performance.