Management of RF Energy Harvesting: A Survey

Advancement in energy harvesting technologies has inspired new ways of supporting industrial applications especially in harsh environment with almost everlasting free power. There are several sources such as solar, wind, vibration, radio frequency (RF), etc. and each source has its own characteristics. RF poses unique characteristics which make it a good candidate for specific applications such as indoor sensor networks. However, due to the scarcity of harvested power, it is essential to manage this power efficiently taking into consideration the quality of service requirements. In this paper, we classified the power management techniques into two major classes: soft and hard techniques; soft techniques such as MAC protocols, while hard techniques RF harvester circuit design. In this work, we survey the literature for the existing soft power management techniques for Radio Frequency (RF) energy harvesting based sensor networks. Then, we shed light on the major challenges and open issues in building a sustainable RF energy harvesting based wireless sensor networks.