Broadband vibration energy powered autonomous wireless frequency monitoring system based on triboelectric nanogenerators

Vibration frequency monitoring is an important means of safety inspection and fault detection for mechanical equipment, in which the vibration sensors are mainly powered by batteries or cables. Herein, we report a broadband vibration energy powered autonomous wireless frequency monitoring system (AWFMS) based on two triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs), in which one is used for broadband vibration energy harvesting (P-TENG) and the other is used for active vibration frequency sensing (S-TENG). In a broad range of 6–20 Hz, the output voltage of P-TENG can be converted to a stable direct current voltage of 2.5 V by power management module and drive the microcontroller unit (MCU). While the output signal of S-TENG is acquired and processed by the MCU for the frequency calculation and wireless data transmission. By integrating both characteristics of TENG as a power source and a sensor, the AWFMS has provided an effective solution for self-powered and autonomous vibration monitoring. Moreover, the AWFMS is used as a sensor network node and the transmitted data can be relayed to cloud platform by Narrow Band Internet of Things technology. This work has shown extensive applications and promising prospects of TENG in Internet of Things, big data, and smart factory