Development of a self-powered wireless IoT mesh network platform for asset tracking, monitoring and wayfinding applications

为物联网网络的各种元素供电是规模、安装和维护成本以及可持续性的主要制约因素，因为物联网设备通常是电池供电或主电源供电。lightity已经解决了终端节点（例如传感器/跟踪器标签）的这些限制，使用其世界领先的高效室内光伏技术从室内和环境照明中收集能量。这避免了更换电池的成本和不便，也避免了大量电池浪费对环境的影响。基于光广播的ble标签/传感器通常用于星形拓扑物联网网络，其中每个标签直接与固定（有线）网关设备通信，接收并将数据传递到后端（云）进行分析。然而，对于收集的光能来说，网关太耗电了。对于典型的BLE标签，网络范围受到标签广播范围的限制，需要在每个房间都有一个网关，这意味着大型建筑物（如机场，医院，仓库，展览中心）的网关数量非常大（许多100-1,000）。网状网络拓扑通过增加电池供电的中继/锚点来大量减少对网关的需求，解决了网络的成本、不便和易于扩展的问题。这些中继接收和发送来自终端节点的数据，并将网络数据最佳地路由到每个建筑物的单个或少量网关。它们仍然需要比终端节点更大的功率。然而，随着最近网格技术的改进和我们在这个项目中提出的一系列创新，特别是改善光捕获，用收获的光能为它们供电现在是触手可及的。该项目将使网状物联网网络的绝大部分基础设施独立于电池或市电，从而实现低成本、可持续的可扩展性。这个拟议的工业阶段研发项目旨在开发原型光能收集驱动的基于ble的Wirepas Mesh继电器和双向传感器终端节点。Crowd Connected将在挑战性能极限的真实环境中测试最终设备。

Powering the various elements of IoT networks is a major constraint on the scale, installation and maintenance cost and sustainability, as IoT devices are typically either battery or mains-powered. Lightricity already addresses these limitations for the end-nodes (e.g. sensors/tracker tags), using its world-leading efficiency indoor photovoltaic technology to harvest energy from indoor and ambient lighting. This avoids the cost and inconvenience of ever having to change a battery, and the environmental impact of massive battery waste. Lightricity broadcast-only BLE-based tags/sensors are generally used in star topology IoT networks, where every tag communicates directly with a fixed (wired) gateway device receiving and passing data it to the backend (Cloud) for analytics. Gateways, however, are too power-hungry for harvested light energy. With typical BLE tags network range is limited by tag broadcast range, necessitating a gateway in every room, implying very large gateway numbers (many 100-1,000's) for big buildings e.g. airports, hospitals, warehouses, exhibition centres.Mesh networking topology addresses the cost, inconvenience and easy scalability of networks by adding battery-powered relays/anchors to massively reduce the need for gateways. These relays receive and send data from end-nodes and route network data optimally to a single or small number of gateways per building. They still require significantly more power than end-nodes. However, with recent improvements in mesh technology and a series of innovations we propose in this project, particularly to improve light capture, powering them with harvested light energy is now within reach. This project will make the vast majority of a mesh IoT network's infrastructure independent of battery or mains power thus achieving low cost, sustainable scalability.This proposed industrial stage R&D project aims to develop prototype light energy harvesting-powered BLE-based Wirepas Mesh relays and bidirectional sensor end-nodes. Crowd Connected will test the resulting devices in real environments that challenge the performance limits.