Upper Bounds for Energy Harvesting in the Region of the Human Head

Goll, Erich; Zenner, Hans‐Peter; Dalhoff, Ernst

doi:10.1109/tbme.2011.2163407

Cited by 20 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…The movements of the human body or even the internal organs [26] are good sources of kinetic energy. In [60] and [25] it is shown that several µW to mW of power can be extracted from the trunk and the head of the body during walking or running. The inner human body temperature is maintained at a relatively constant value of 37 • C and there is a temperature gradient between the inner body, the skin and the air ambience.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Energy Harvesting and Power Delivery for Implantable Medical Devices

Tsui

2013

FNT in Electronic Design Automation

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Providing a constant and perpetual energy source is a key design challenge for implantable medical devices. Harvesting energy from the human body and the surrounding is one of the possible solutions. Delivering energy from outside the body through different wireless media is another feasible solution. In this monograph, we review different stateof-the-art mechanisms that do "in-body" energy harvesting as well as "out-of-body" wireless power delivery. Details of the energy sources, transmission media, energy harvesting and coupling techniques, and the required energy transducers will be discussed. The merits and disadvantages of each approach will be presented. Different mechanisms have very different characteristics on their output voltage, amount of harvested power and power transfer efficiency. Therefore different types of power conditioning circuits are required. Issues of designing the building blocks for the power conditioning circuits for different energy harvesting or coupling mechanisms will be compared.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Energy Harvesting and Power Delivery for Implantable Medical Devices

Tsui

2013

FNT in Electronic Design Automation

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“…These forces affect ordinary motion equations and make them inapplicable for power analyses. Unfortunately, several papers [33,34], do not reflect this fact and presented power analyses are therefore influenced. The damping effect can be neglected for very low weight of the resonance mass as it has been described in a simple experiment reported before [35].…”

Section: Energy Harvesting From the Mechanical Movementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Model-based design of artificial zero power cochlear implant

et al. 2015

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“…By integrating the available power in this figure over one mouth opening and closing cycle, the average available energy is estimated to be 3.3 mJ, equivalent to an average power of 5 mW 3.3 mJ×1.5 Hz . Also by multiplying this energy by the approximate number of 2200 chewing cycles per day [24], one obtains 7.3 J of chewing energy per day from ear canal dynamic motion. This amount of energy is equal to the energy consumption of a 1 mW-hearing aid [25] during 2 hourscan power a 1mW-hearing aid [25] for more than 2 hours.…”

Section: A Available Power From the Ear Canal Dynamic Motionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Energy Harvesting for In-Ear Devices Using Ear Canal Dynamic Motion

Delnavaz

Voix

2014

IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron.

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Abstract-In this paper, we study the possibility of using energy harvesting from ear canal dynamic motion as a source of power to replace the use of batteries for in-ear devices. Two handmade micro-power generators capable of scavenging energy from ear canal deformation are presented in this paper: (1) a hydroelectromagnetic energy harvester and (2) a flexible piezoelectric generator. The experimental results show that 3.3 mJ of energy per mouth opening and closing cycle is available from ear canal dynamic motion. If we consider that possibly thousands of such cycles occur daily, ear canal dynamic motion could prove a likely source of energy for in-ear applications.Index Terms-ear canal dynamic motion, electromagnetic energy harvester, piezoelectric energy harvester. I. INTRODUCTIONT HE most limiting aspect in mobile technology is the electrical power supply. It restricts autonomy and has a direct impact on the weight and size of electronic devices. Although the use of batteries is still widespread, their cost and impact on the environment is an increasing problem.According to the World Health Organization [1], hundreds of millions of people suffer from various types of hearing impairment and tens of millions of hearing aids are currently in use. Hearing aids and other types of in-ear devices such as digital earplugs, smart hearing protectors and Bluetooth communication earpieces typically have low power consumption and strict size limitations. In recent years, they have been substantially modified and are becoming less energy consuming. Since energy harvesting technologies are usually suitable for low power portable devices, they are gaining interest as an alternative to batteries for in-ear devices.In general, batteries and energy harvesting from the environment or the human body are the only possible ways to power in-ear devices. In this paper, we investigate a new source of energy harvesting for in-ear devices that would come from the wearer: ear canal dynamic motion. This paper is organized as follows: Section II provides an overview of recent advances in various known energy source technologies for in-ear applications. Ear canal dynamic motion as an unexploited source of energy is studied in section III. A hydro-electromagnetic power generator and a piezo-ring energy harvester were designed, modeled, built, and finally tested. Their results are presented in sections IV and V and are discussed in section VI. Finally, the conclusion is drawn in section VII.

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Upper Bounds for Energy Harvesting in the Region of the Human Head

Cited by 20 publications

References 30 publications

Energy Harvesting and Power Delivery for Implantable Medical Devices

Energy Harvesting and Power Delivery for Implantable Medical Devices

Model-based design of artificial zero power cochlear implant

Energy Harvesting for In-Ear Devices Using Ear Canal Dynamic Motion

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