The continuous development of internet of things (IoT) infrastructure and applications is paving the way for advanced and innovative ideas and solutions, some of which are pushing the limits of state-of-the-art technology. The increasing demand for Wireless Sensor Nodes (WSNs) able to collect and transmit data through wireless communication channels, while often positioned in locations that are difficult to access, is driving research into innovative solutions involving energy harvesting (EH) and wireless power transfer (WPT) to eventually allow battery-free sensor nodes. Due to the pervasiveness of radio frequency (RF) energy, RF EH and WPT are key technologies with the potential to power IoT devices and smart sensing architectures involving nodes that need to be wireless, maintenance free, and sufficiently low in cost to promote their use almost anywhere. This paper presents a state-of-the-art, ultra-low power 2.5 μ W highly integrated mixed signal system on chip (SoC), for multi-source energy harvesting and wireless power transfer. It introduces a novel architecture that integrates an ultra-low power intelligent power management, an RF to DC converter with very low power sensitivity and high power conversion efficiency (PCE), an Amplitude-Shift-Keying/Frequency-Shift-Keying (ASK/FSK) receiver and digital circuitry to achieve the advantage to cope, in a versatile way and with minimal use of external components, with the wide variety of energy sources and use cases. Diverse methods for powering Wireless Sensor Nodes through energy harvesting and wireless power transfer are implemented providing related system architectures and experimental results.
Electron Cyclotron Resonance (ECR) ion Sources are the most performing machines for the production of intense beams of multi-charged ions in fundamental science, applied physics and industry. Investigation of plasma dynamics in ECRIS still remains a challenge. A better comprehension of electron heating, ionization and diffusion processes, ion confinement and ion beam formation is mandatory in order to increase ECRIS performances both in terms of output beams currents, charge states, beam quality (emittance minimization, beam halos suppression, etc.). Numerical solution of Vlasov equation via kinetic codes coupled to FEM solvers is ongoing at INFN-LNS, based on a PIC strategy. Preliminary results of the modeling will be shown about wave-plasma interaction and electron-ion confinement: the obtained results are very helpful to better understand the influence of the different parameters (especially RF frequency and power) on the ion beam formation mechanism.
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