Conditioning of Electromagnetic Field Energy in a Harvester System with a Supercapacitor as the Main Energy Storage Device

The results of practical considerations on the issue of conditioning and storing energy obtained from generally available electromagnetic field sources (e.g., commonly used telecommunication systems and RFID radio frequency identification systems) or other potential areas of energy harvesting have been presented in this paper. Due to the low efficiency of this type of alternative power source for electronic microsystems, it is necessary to properly process the obtained energy in order to achieve parameters suitable for powering subsequent elements of the powered system (supply voltage, internal resistance of the source, limitations resulting from the permissible parameters of the components used, etc.) and its effective storage. This paper analyses the use of increasingly available and technologically advanced supercapacitors as the main energy storage device. These are electronic components that fill the gap between commonly known and widely used capacitors and more complex and expensive battery systems that require complicated systems to support the charging and discharging of such storage devices. However, they require consideration of their dynamic characteristics in terms of the charging and energy storage process. The properties of such components were investigated, the requirements and application limitations as a battery were determined, and the results of tests of selected supercapacitors were analysed. Based on the obtained data, several concepts for energy conditioning systems were presented, enabling the practical use of the advantages of supercapacitors as the main energy storage device, for example, an electromagnetic field energy harvester system from an RFID system.