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Virginia Tech

Multi-source Energy Harvesting for Wildlife Tracking

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

Sufficient power supply to run GPS machinery and transmit data on a long-term basis remains to be the key challenge for wildlife tracking technology. Traditional ways of replacing battery periodically is not only time and money consuming but also dangerous to live-trapping wild animals. In this paper, an innovative wildlife tracking collar with multi-source energy harvester with advantage of high efficiency and reliability is proposed. This multi-source energy harvester entails a solar energy harvester and an innovative rotational electromagnetic energy harvester is mounted on the "wildlife tracking collar" which will extend the duration of wild life tracking by 20% time as was estimated. A feedforward and feedback control of DC-DC converter circuit is adopted to passively realize the Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) logic for the solar energy harvester. A novel electromagnetic pendulum energy harvester with motion regulator is proposed which can mechanically rectify the irregular bidirectional swing motion of the pendulum into unidirectional rotational motion of the motor. No electrical rectifier is needed and voltage drops from diodes can be avoided, the EM pendulum energy harvester can provide 200~300 mW under the 0.4g base excitation of 4.5 Hz. The nonlinearity of the disengage mechanism in the pendulum energy harvester will lead to a broad bandwidth frequency response. Simulation results shows the broadband advantage of the proposed energy harvester and experiment results verified that at some frequencies over the natural frequency the efficiency is increased.

Degree

thesis:*
Name thesis:degree_name
Master of Science
Level thesis:degree_level
masters
Discipline thesis:degree_discipline
Mechanical Engineering
Department dc:contributor.department
Mechanical Engineering
Grantor dc:publisher
Virginia Tech
Year dc:date.issued
2015

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Wu, You
Chair dc:contributor.committeechair
  • Zuo, Lei
Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember
  • Parker, Robert G.
  • Southward, Steve C.

Subjects

dc:subject × 6

Rights

dc:rights
Statement dc:rights
  • In Copyright

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
Dc Identifier Other
vt_gsexam:5845
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/54022

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
Virginia Tech
Base URL
vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/oai/request
Last updated
2026-07-22
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
citation

Wu, You. Multi-source Energy Harvesting for Wildlife Tracking. masters thesis, Virginia Tech, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/54022