Wideband and high-power vibration energy harvesting by a self-excitated impact oscillator

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Vibration energy harvesting is a technology that aims to collect unused or wasted mechanical energy from the environment and convert it to electric energy. It has attracted increasing attention in the last decade as a local and decentralized power source for embedded systems. In this research, a novel class of wide-band and high-power-efficiency energy harvesting devices is realized by combining a nonlinear hardening oscillator such as impact oscillator and bistable oscillator with a self-excitation circuit. As a consequence, the power-bandwidth trade-off, one of the most significant problems that impede the practical use of the vibration harvesting devices, has been resolved for the case of the periodic excitation. Furthermore, a new idea which can lead to high power regeneration from a low frequency vibration source has been suggested by pursuing the improvement of the power conversion efficiency from the mechanical input energy to the retrieved electric energy.