Abstract
As an emerging market, the ultra-low-power, wireless sensor system market is
defined in many different ways. Applications, power levels, architectures and
technologies vary widely, making forecasts difficult. Some applications use
single sensor units; others employ large wireless mesh networks. Powering can
be wired or wireless; active or passive; battery back-up or battery-less.
Power levels vary from <1mW to 1W or above.
Wireless sensor devices package together a circuit board with networking and
application software. Interfaces to sensors can detect changes in temperature,
pressure, moisture, light, sound or magnetism. A wireless radio can report on
these findings, usually powered by batteries. Sensor networks can include 10
to 100,000 nodes, and scalability can be a problem. Node position may not be
predetermined. The lifetime of a sensor network depends on the battery
lifetime, and relocating and recharging a large number of sensing nodes is
difficult
Energy harvesting has been proposed as a way of addressing some of these
problems. In terms of a forecast, however, these kinds of technologies are
also emerging and further complicate the industry landscape. For manufacturers
of energy harvesting modules, micro-batteries and power management ICs, the
potential opportunities are considerable but still uncertain.
This report defines and forecasts five Wireless Sensor System markets by
Application, Power Levels, Microbatteries, Energy Harvesting and Regulators.
Since this report focuses on energy harvesting, the forecasts begin at the
“served available market” level, not the total available market.
The latter would include wired sensor networks and applications not considered
good opportunities for energy harvesting. All the applications included in
this report have been filtered with energy harvesting opportunities in mind.
Our forecast assumptions are included at the beginning of each section. Four
regions are analyzed: Worldwide, North America, Europe and Asia. Energy
harvesting is expected to have some distinct trends geographically, and these
are noted where appropriate.
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