Towards Extending Sensor Node Lifetime with Printed Supercapacitors

The realization of completely autonomous wireless sensor networks (WSN) has been hindered with difficulties in implementing a truly "perpetual" power supply. Typically, the generic power supply for a sensor node is a battery, which is limited in cycle life. Current research in energy scavenging technology, along with the use of innovative energy storage devices such as supercapacitors, has demonstrated the improvement of sensor node lifetime characteristics. In this paper, we present the experimental results on a novel electrochemical supercapacitor (with improved electrical characteristics) manufactured using a "direct write" deposition tool. This technology allows one to print the supercapacitors with capacitances above 40 mF/cm 2 directly on board of a sensor node covering any unoccupied surface area. Experiments on the printed storage chrarging with (AC) and (DC) based ambient energy via a specially developed generic energy scavenging module (ESM), and 24-hours deployment with a ty...