Title
Supercapacitor leakage in energy-harvesting sensor nodes: Fact or fiction?
Abstract
As interest in energy-harvesting sensor nodes continues to grow, the use of supercapacitors as energy stores or buffers is gaining popularity. The reasons for their use are numerous, and include their high power density, simple interfacing requirements, simpler measurement of state-of-charge, and a greater number of charging cycles than secondary batteries. However, supercapacitor energy densities are orders of magnitude lower. Furthermore, they have been reported to exhibit significant leakage, and this has been shown to increase exponentially with terminal voltage (and hence stored energy). This observation has resulted in a number of algorithms, designs and methods being proposed for effective operation of supercapacitor-based energy-harvesting sensor nodes. In this paper, it is argued that traditional `leakage' is not as significant as has commonly been suggested. Instead, what is observed as leakage is in fact predominantly due to internal charge redistribution. As a result, it is suggested that different approaches are required in order to effectively utilize supercapacitors in energy-harvesting sensor nodes.
Year
DOI
Venue
2012
10.1109/INSS.2012.6240581
INSS
Keywords
Field
DocType
electric sensing devices,electrical faults,energy harvesting,supercapacitors,energy storage,energy-harvesting sensor node,internal charge redistribution,power density,secondary battery,state-of-charge measurement,supercapacitor energy density,supercapacitor leakage,reliability,reservoirs
Orders of magnitude (numbers),Leakage (electronics),Computer science,Supercapacitor,Interfacing,Energy harvesting,Power density,Electrical engineering,Terminal voltage
Conference
ISBN
Citations 
PageRank 
978-1-4673-1785-6
2
0.42
References 
Authors
3
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
geoffrey merrett141149.30
Alex S. Weddell222525.00