EIOTI – Energy self-sufficient IoT infrastructure

Initial situation

In many new fields of application for IoT sensors, there is no access to the power grid, which would result in high costs and personnel costs to connect the sensors. Corresponding application examples include environmental monitoring, disaster prevention and agricultural scenarios. Some versions of sensors already exist that are powered by energy harvesting from the environment. However, the base stations required to receive and transmit data from the distributed sensors still require access to an energy grid. If this supply were to fail, all communication would be interrupted. There is also the challenge that base stations are often placed at locations that are exposed and therefore often have no access to an energy supply network due to their good reception properties and radio coverage. 

Solution

The "Energy-autonomous IoT infrastructure" (EIOTI) project is addressing this problem. As part of the project, an energy-optimized LPWAN base station is to be developed that is used for wireless sensor networks. Energy is to be supplied entirely via energy harvesting using energy sources from the direct environment, such as movement or light.

For this purpose, a transmission functionality including an adapted waveform for the base station is to be developed, through which a base station can act as a relay: It then sends the received sensor data on to the next supplied infrastructure point. In addition, an energy supply module is to be developed that primarily uses small solar modules to supply the base station or to store the energy generated in a battery in the medium term. Wind and water turbines are also an option for the module.

The LPWAN technology mioty^® is used for data transmission in the project. Compared to other wireless protocols, mioty^® requires only a fraction of the energy to transmit the same amount of data in the previous standard profile. In addition, mioty^® is highly scalable, which is important for the interference-free coverage of additional use cases. mioty^® supports up to 24 times as many connections compared to existing LPWAN technologies.  

To ensure that the base station is not only energy self-sufficient but can also run in the absence of (mobile) infrastructure, a new type of high data rate profile (HDR) is to be developed and implemented for mioty^® during the course of the project in order to forward the received sensor data to the backend.

In addition to the base station, the operation of a sensor and actuator node should also be implemented in an energy self-sufficient manner, as their operating mode also has an influence on the energy consumption of the base station. This means that the IoT infrastructure as a whole can be made energy self-sufficient.

Fraunhofer IIS is working on this project together with Agvolution, Enerthing GmbH and WEPTECH elektronik GmbH. The project started in January 2023 and will run until January 2025.

Benefit

Independence from energy grids enables sensor networks that are safe and maintenance-free and can also be used in off-grid environments without any problems.

The results of the EIOTI project will be used directly by the participating industrial partners to develop customized IoT products such as energy self-sufficient sensors and base stations. By applying the project results obtained, the companies are thus able to develop innovative products and thereby improve their market opportunities in the field of information and communication technologies (ICT). The companies have great opportunities to strengthen their growth and competitiveness through the project.

The focus is on agricultural use cases in rural areas with poor energy supply options. In addition, the project is evaluating further use cases in the smart city area of environmental monitoring and disaster prevention, some of which will ultimately be selected for implementation as demonstrators.