Silicon Labs Unveils Energy Harvest WSN

Published:2011/6/1 2:26:00 Author:Amy From:SeekIC

According to the news, Silicon Laboratories Inc. released a wireless sensor node (WSN) reference design which adopts Si10xx wireless microcontroller (MCU) family as foundation. It adopts energy harvesting source to achieve power supplied.

As we all know, it has been years since harvested energy sources came out as system power supply, but it is still challenging if take wireless sensor nodes within very low power budgets.

In the reference design, the capacity of thin-film battery is 0.7-mAh. Under the condition of direct sunlight, the battery can be recharged fully within two hours. In the mode of sleep, the wireless sensor node will last for 7,000 hours for charge. Continuous transmitting of wireless system will run for about three hours without stop, despite it is designed to constantly recharge itself at an suitable level to keep the thin-film battery from completely discharging.


Silicon Labs’ design consists of wireless network and USB software and a complete circuit design with RF layout, bill of materials (BOM), schematics and Gerber files. The design is composed of three components:

A solar-powered wireless sensor node is used for measuring temperature, light level and charge level. It adopts a Si10xx wireless MCU to control the sensor system, transmit data wirelessly and a thin-film battery to store harvested energy.

A wireless USB adapter is to display the sensor data when connects the wireless sensor node to a PC. The adapter also has the features of Silicon Labs’ Si4431 EZRadioPRO transceiver with an MCU running USB-HID class software and EZMac wireless software stack.

A wireless sensor network GUI displays data from up to four sensor nodes.

An on-board bypass connector gives developers the flexibility to bypass the solar cell and tap other energy harvesting sources such as vibration (piezoelectric), thermal and RF.

It is suitable for home and building automation, security systems, industrial control applications, medical monitoring devices, asset tracking systems and infrastructure and agricultural monitoring systems with regarding its arrangement.

"By combining ultra-low-power wireless MCU technology with a state-of-the-art energy harvesting system, Silicon Labs has delivered the industry’s most energy-efficient, self-sustaining wireless networking solution," said Mark Thompson, vice president of embedded mixed-signal products at Silicon Labs, in a statement. It was not disclosed from where the solar cell is sourced.

The price of Silicon Labs energy harvesting reference design is $45. The related integrated circuit is MB2S.

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