Doing More with Ambient Light: Harvesting Indoor Energy and Data Using Emerging Solar Cells

Abstract

On one side, the capacity of the world’s photovoltaic (PV) systems is experiencing unprecedented growth; on the other side, the number of connected devices is rapidly increasing due to the development of advanced communication technologies. These fields are not completely independent, and recent studies show that indoor energy harvesting is a great candidate for answering the energy challenges of future generations of telecommunications, namely 5G and 6G, ideal for internet-of-things (IoT) scenarios, i.e., smart homes, smart cities, and smart factories. The emerging PV technologies have shown amazing capabilities for indoor energy harvesting, displaying high power conversion efficiency, good flexibility, and champion-specific powers. Recently, the excellent dynamic performance of PV devices enabled them to be used as data receivers in optical wireless communication (OWC) scenarios, calling forth an innovative system able to simultaneously harvest energy and receive communication data with a single PV device. This article reviews the recent literature devoted to the exploitation of photovoltaic technologies for simultaneous indoor energy harvesting and OWC data reception. This contribution highlights the strong potential of the approach toward the next generation of Green IoT systems and the current challenges that need to be addressed with regard to the physics of solar cells, from laboratory to large-scale applications.

Enhanced power supply circuitry with long duration and high‐efficiency charging for indoor photovoltaic energy harvesting internet of things end device

“…Low-voltage output PV plates are inefficient and complex to use in IoT end nodes at 200 lux due to the required cold start process. This paper simulates a low-cost, easy-to-use, and efficient solution that uses an indoor high-voltage output PV plate [11,12] to charge the supercapacitor directly, without the need for a cold start process [20,21]. Perovskite indoor PV cells have achieved power conversion efficiencies of over 33.9% at 200 lux, and these efficiencies are still increasing [22].…”

Toward Indoor Simulations of OPV Cells for Visible Light Communication and Energy Harvesting

“…Other contributions to the field focus on characterizing the performance of PV devices in energy harvesting and communication, but they do not take into account real-life complex IoT environments as most are realized under LOS configuration. For those interested in delving deeper into the topic, we suggest the following reference for a better understanding [51].…”

Impact of the gate work function on the experimental I-V characteristics of MOS solar cells simulated with the Sentaurus TCAD software

“…An Agilent 4146C Source Measurement Unit (SMU) was used, programmed to apply a potential between 2 V and -2 V to the metal gate with step voltage of 0.1 V/s in order to extract the I x V characteristics and obtain the usual important parameters of the solar cells: Short Circuit Current Density (JSC), Open Circuit Voltage (VOC), Maximum Power Density (Pmax) and Fill Factor (FF = Pmax/(VOC. JSC) and the conversion efficiency (η = Pmax/Pin) obtained from the incident power density Pin(mW/cm 2 ) [1,20].…”

“…Currently, the energy conversion efficiency of commercial outdoor C-Si solar cells is about 27% [1][2][3][4] and indoor solar cells for energy harvesting, also known as IPVs (Indoor Photovoltaics), is about 5-7% and reaches the mW range for output power [1,5]. The global market for IPVs has grown rapidly as these devices have great potential for powering IOT (Internet of Things), including integrated circuits, communication devices, and distributed and remote sensors.…”