Optimizing Direction of Axes for Energy Harvesting Devices for Body Sensor Networks

Joshua Blaine blaine@ece.rochester.edu ABSTRACT

We investigate the positioning of an energy harvesting Body Sensor Network node in order to optimize the direction in which the axes of the harvesting device are aligned. Based on empirical measurements during normal daily activities, the direction of a microgeneration harvester is optimized along with the parameters of said device. The optimization of these devices is done for two architectures, namely velocitydamped resonant generator and coulomb-damped resonant generators.

Alireza Seyedi alireza@ece.rochester.edu

University of Rochester Rochester, NY

University of Rochester Rochester, NY

X Axis Acceleration for Left Ankle 3Day Measurement 3

2 Acceleration Magnitude [in Gs]

1. INTRODUCTION
Body sensor networks (BSNs) are an attractive proposition for monitoring various health aspects of our lives. These networks are usually battery-powered sensor networks on ones body. The low power requirements due to close proximity to each other allow battery operated BSNs to operate eciently, but the batteries must be changed periodically. This gives rise to research on sensors that generate, or harvest, their own energy in order to maximize the lifetime of these sensors [4]. An attractive solution for BSNs is a method to harvest energy from human movement, or the acceleration of the body [2]. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the acceleration of the human body with accelerometers [1] in order to optimize the direction of placement of the axes of these accelerometers that will maximize the power harvested. Efciency of these harvesting devices can then be maximized by maximizing the available acceleration in the direction the device is placed.

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Figure 1: Data

One-Dimensional Raw Accelerometer

tion of time in terms of G forces. This data is taken at 75 samples/second, and then the raw, unltered acceleration then undergoes ltering in order to both remove the eect of gravity and also to remove noise in the data as described in Section 2.1.

2.1

Accelerometer Data Processing

2. ACCELEROMETER MEASUREMENTS
The emperical data that is being used for the processing is obtained from a three day sampling of a three-dimensional accelerometer placed on the left ankle of one subject. This accelerometers measures the acceleration of the body part in terms of G forces along three orthogonal directions. The data is collected as raw, unltered acceleration as a func-

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In order to remove noise and gravity, preprocessing is done independently on the three data streams for the device. This processing is done independently even though the data streams are correlated. Using the sampling rate of 75 samples/second, we remove the high-frequency noise by using a second-order Butterworth low-pass lter with a cut-o frequency of 35Hz. This removes the high frequency noise that can be seen in Fig. 1. Also noticeable in this gure is the near constant acceleration about the value 1G. This steady acceleration is due to gravity, and is removed with a Butterworth high-pass lter with at least 100dB of attenuation in the stopband from 0 to 0.3Hz. The lter also provides less than 0.01dB of attenuation from 1.5Hz to the devices Nyquist frequency of 37.5Hz.

3.

OPTIMIZATION OF DEVICE AXES POSTITIONING

Optimization of positioning of accelerometers with respect

to the position on the body is done for two dierent architectures of vibration-driven micro-power generators [5] [3]. Each of these devices has a seperate model for generating power from acceleration as described in Sections 3.1 and 3.2. For each of the studied device types, the process as described in Section 3.3 allows us to nd the direction in which the most acceleration occurs.Using this direction we then calculate the optimal parameters for the VDRG and CDRG architectures separately as described in Section 3.4.

is the exact same as before so that we can obtain the displacement of the frame of the device. To transform this into the displacement of the mass it undergoes a ltering with a lter that is described by the dierential equation: m zmass (t) = k zmass (t) F sgn(zmass (t)]) m y (t) (8) Where m is the mass, k is the spring constant, and F is another parameter. This describes the conversion from the frame displacement to the mass displacement. From here we can say that the velocity of the mass inside the frame becomes: d zmass (t) = vmass (t) (9) dt Which corresponds to a power of
2 vmass (t) = pcdrg (t)

3.1 Velocity Damped Resonant Generator

In this section an ideal velocity-damped resonant generator (VDRG) model is described in order to transform the acceleration to power. A more detailed description of this architecture can be found in [3]. Assuming an initial vector of acceleration values (of our device) adev t, the power output of a device of an ideal VDRG generator is related to this adev (t) as follows: adev (t) = vdev (t) (1) vdev (t) = xdev (t) (2)

(10)

This describes the conversion from acceleration to power of the CDRG architecture, and also shows the parameters, k,F , and m that must be optimized in order to provide the most power output.

3.3

Acceleration Optimization

Where we double integrate the acceleration vector of the device in order to nd the position of the device over time. In the case of the Ideal VDRG generator, to calculate the position of the mass inside the frame, we need to lter the position with a lter that is described by the dierential equation: m zmass (t) = kr(t) Dzmass (t) m xdev (t) (3)

where zmass (t) describes the motion of the internal mass relative to the frame in which it moves and m is the mass, k is the spring constant and D is the proportionality factor between the damping force and the velocity. The velocity of the mass inside the frame becomes: d (zmass (t)) = vmass(t) dt Which corresponds to a power of D(vmass (t))2 = pvdrg (t) (4)

In order to nd the single dimension in which the three dimensional acceleration is maximized we rst project the three dimensional acceleration data into one direction, and then calculate the power in that direction over the sampled time. The expected power can then be calculated and compared to all other directions. We can do this by taking a number of points from the positive quadrangle of a unit sphere as the directions on which we project the acceleration data. This can be described as follows: Starting with an acceleration vector (obtained from our device) [ ] adev (t) = ax (t) ay (t) az (t) we want to nd a direction [ ] vector d = dx dy dz that maximizes the power output of the device. To do this, we rst project the acceleration vector adev (t) onto a point on a unit sphere which we will call our d . a (t) = adev (t) d dev (11)

(5)

This describes the conversion from acceleration to power of the VDRG architecture, and also shows the parameters, k,D, and m that must be optimized in order to provide the most power output.

We then calculate the power of the device pvdrg (t) and pcdrg (t) using our new acceleration vector a (t) by using the prodev cesses as described above for each of the points d . We then take the expectation of the new powers separately in order to nd the direction that maximizes the power output of the devices. pvdrg = E [pvdrg (t)] pcdrg = E [pcdrg (t)] (12a) (12b)

3.2 Coulomb-Damped Resonant Generator

In this section, a Coulomb-Damped Resonant Generator (CDRG) architecture is described to transform the acceleration into power. A more detailed description of this architecture can be found in [3]. The model for CDRG can be described as follows: adev (t) = vdev (t) vdev (t) = xdev (t) (7) (6)

We then compare each of these powers and plot the magnitude of the power in each of these directions in that direction in order to show a graphical representation.

3.4

Parameter Optimization

Where we double integrate the acceleration vector in order to nd the position of the device over time. This process

For each of the architectures (VDRG and CDRG) we consider a conguration where the mass inside the device is m = 1g and the limitation that the size of the frame inside the device imposes on the maximum displacement of the mass is rL = 1mm. This describes a limitation on zmass such that |zmass | rL . This conguration of a microgenerator is consistent with MEMs generators, and other congurations that produce more power can be also be manufactured [5].

Power Weighted SemiSphere 0.2

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Figure 2: data.

Alive accelerometer used in collecting

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Table 1: Resulting VDRG and CDRG optimal directions for the left ankle. Maximum Direction Architecture Type p xdir ydir zdir VDRG CDRG xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx

y magnitude

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Figure 3: Power Weighted Semi-Sphere From a CDRG Generator on Left Ankle [2] A study of vibration-based energy harvesting in activities of daily living. In Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare (PervasiveHealth), 2010 4th International Conference on-NO PERMISSIONS, pages 1 4, march 2010. [3] P. D. Mitcheson, T. C. Green, E. M. Yeatman, and A. S. Holmes. Architectures for Vibration-Driven Micropower Generators. Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems, 13(3):429440, June 2004. [4] A. Seyedi and B. Sikdar. Modeling and analysis of energy harvesting nodes in body sensor networks. In Medical Devices and Biosensors, 2008. ISSS-MDBS 2008. 5th International Summer School and Symposium on, pages 175 178, june 2008. [5] T. von Bren, P. D. Mitcheson, T. C. Green, E. M. u Yeatman, A. S. Holmes, and G. Trster. Optimization o of inertial micropower Generators for human walking motion. IEEE Sensors Journal, 6(1):2838, Feb. 2006.

The parameters are optimized and any values of the parameters that cause |zmass | > rL are discarded due to the mass hitting the frame and a loss of energy happening due to that situation.

4. NUMERICAL RESULTS
Using acceleration data collected from an investigator, we can analyze the the positioning of the accelerometer in order to nd the maximum generating directions. For a situation where the position of the accelerometer shown in Figure 4 and the resulting power was smoothed with a moving average with a time window of 5 seconds. Using the processes described above the results as shown in Table 1 show the maximum power generating direction and the expected power generated in that direction. Table 2 shows the optimized parameter values for this conguration of m = 0.5g and rL = 1mm. A more representative view of all the directions tested is shown in the magnitude weighted positive quadrangle of the directions used to project the acceleration. This is shown in Figure 3 as the power generated by a VDRG Generator weights each of the directions used to project.

5. CONCLUSION 6. REFERENCES
[1] Alive Heart Monitor: Bluetooth ECG and Activity Monitor. Alive Technologies Pty Ltd, 11 Technology Drive, Arundel Aueensland 4214, Australia.

Table 2: Resulting VDRG and CDRG optimal parameters for conguration m = 0.5g and rL = 1mm Architecture Type k(N/m) D(Ns/m) F(Ns/m) VDRG CDRG kval kval DV AL N/A N/A F V AL