A Sustainable Scalable Self-configurable Sensor-based IoT Network

With an increasing demand for IoT applications, powering these nodes has become challenging. Delivering power to IoT nodes with energy harvesting is a promising solution. Solar, among many harvesting approaches, is emerging for both indoor and outdoor applications. However, most of the published solutions with solar harvesting are single-node solutions for short and long-range communication. The primary challenge for developing scalable and self-configurable sustainable networks is the intermittent operation of the IoT nodes due to the non-availability of required power. In this paper, we demonstrate a cost-efficient solar-powered multi-hop self-configurable sensor network for future IoT applications. One of our proposed solutions can harvest 420 mW power and hence can support multiple sensors as well; however, it does not store any power. Another design is more stable with an onboard supercapacitor but can harvest a max of 80 mW. Both of these solutions are able to power nodes continuously in outdoor settings and hence develop a scalable network. We also propose a compact, cost-effective, rugged version of the solar-powered IoT sensor node.