News
US Navy awards MicroStrain contract to develop a new class of energy harvesting wireless sensor networks
Burlington, Vermont 16 December 2002
The US Navy has awarded MicroStrain with a contract to develop the next
generation of energy harvesting Starter Kits. This includes
improvements for shipboard health monitoring.
MicroStrain's latest wireless sensors do not need batteries or external
magnetic fields to power up. Instead, they rely on harvesting
vibrational energy to sense information and to wirelessly transmit data
to the Internet.
Preliminary work at MicroStrain, funded under a Vermont EPSCoR Phase O
SBIR award, demonstrated prototype energy harvesting systems that
employ piezoelectric materials. These wireless Starter Kits use
digital RF communications, node addressing, and time division multiple
access to allow networks of sensing nodes to communicate to a central
(web-enabled) receiver. The new Navy Phase 1 SBIR funding will allow
MicroStrain's engineers to enhance these breakthrough developments.
"These systems have the potential to fundamentally change the way
sensors are used", said Steven Arms, MicroStrain's President. "A major
barrier to the use of sensors is the cost of wiring. Wireless sensors
are now being employed for a range of monitoring applications,
including: machine-to-machine health, structural integrity, security,
agricultural, environmental, medical, and automotive. The maintenance
of primary batteries represents a major barrier to the wide acceptance
of wireless sensing networks. For vibrating systems, harvesting energy
using advanced piezoelectric materials would eliminate battery
maintenance, allowing wireless sensing networks to be deployed for the
entire life of the structure or machine."
About MicroStrain
MicroStain, Inc. currently produces a range of wireless sensing
instruments, including microprocessor based, multichannel, programmable
transmitters that are compatible with a wide range of sensors,
including: thermocouples, strain gauges, accelerometers, displacement
sensors, and capacitive sensors. MicroStrain is a privately held
corporation based in Burlington, Vermont USA.
Contact: Lynne McMinn, VP Marketing lmmcminn@together.net MicroStrain
Inc Tel: (802) 862 6629 Internet hyperlink: http://www.navysbir.com/
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