Low-frequency vibrations typically occur in many practical structures and systems when in use, for example, in aerospaces and industrial machines. Piezoelectric materials feature compactness, lightweight, high integration potential, and permit to transduce mechanical energy from vibrations into electrical energy. Because of their properties, piezoelectric materials have been receiving growing interest during the last decades as potential vibration- harvested energy generators for the proliferating number of embeddable wireless sensor systems in applications such as structural health monitoring (SHM). The basic idea behind piezoelectric energy harvesting (PEH) powered architectures, or energy harvesting (EH) more in general, is to develop truly “fit and forget” solutions that allow reducing physical installations and burdens to maintenance over battery-powered systems. However, due to the low mechanical energy available under low-frequency conditions and the relatively high power consumption of wireless sensor nodes, PEH from low-frequency vibrations is a challenge that needs to be addressed for the majority of the practical cases. Simply saying, the energy harvested from low-frequency vibrations is not high enough to power wireless sensor nodes or the power consumption of the wireless sensor nodes is higher than the harvested energy. This represents a main barrier to the widespread use of PEH technology at the current state of the development, despite the advantages it may offer. The main contribution of this research work concerns the proposal of a novel EH circuitry, which is based on a whole-system approach, in order to develop enhanced PEH powered wireless sensor nodes, hence to compensate the existing mismatch between harvested and demanded energy. By whole-system approach, it is meant that this work develops an integrated system-of-systems rather than a single EH unit, thus getting closer to the industrial need of a ready- to-use energy-autonomous solution for wireless sensor applications such as SHM. To achieve so, this work introduces: Novel passive interfaces in connection with the piezoelectric harvester that permit to extract more energy from it (i.e., a complex conjugate impedance matching (CCIM) interface, which uses a PC permalloy toroidal coil to achieve a large inductive reactance with a centimetre- scaled size at low frequency; and interfaces for resonant PEH applications, which exploit the harvester‟s displacement to achieve a mechanical amplification of the input force, a magnetic and a mechanical activation of a synchronised switching harvesting on inductor (SSHI) mechanism). A novel power management approach, which permits to minimise the power consumption for conditioning the transduced signal and optimises the flow of the harvested energy towards a custom-developed wireless sensor communication node (WSCN) through a dedicated energy-aware interface (EAI); where the EAI is based on a voltage sensing device across a capacitive energy storage. Theoretical and experimental analyses of the developed systems are carried in connection with resistive loads and the WSCN under excitations of low frequency and strain/acceleration levels typical of two potential energy- autonomous applications, that are: 1) wireless condition monitoring of commercial aircraft wings through non-resonant PEH based on Macro-Fibre Composite (MFC) material bonded to aluminium and composite substrates; and wireless condition monitoring of large industrial machinery through resonant PEH based on a cantilever structure. shown that under similar testing conditions the developed systems feature a performance in comparison with other architectures reported in the literature or currently available on the market. Power levels up to 12.16 mW and 116.6 µW were respectively measured across an optimal resistive load of 66 277 kΩ for an implemented non-resonant MFC energy harvester on aluminium substrate and a resonant cantilever-based structure when no interfaces were added into the circuits. When the WSCN was connected to the harvesters in place of the resistive loads, data transmissions as fast as 0.4 and s were also respectively measured. By use of the implemented passive interfaces, a maximum power enhancement of around 95% and 452% was achieved in the two tested cases and faster data transmissions obtained with a maximum percentage improvement around 36% and 73%, respectively. By the use of the EAI in connection with the WSCN, results have also shown that the overall system‟s power consumption is as low as a few microwatts during non- active modes of operation (i.e., before the WSCN starts data acquisition and transmission to a base station). Through the introduction of the developed interfaces, this research work takes a whole-system approach and brings about the capability to continuously power wireless sensor nodes entirely from vibration-harvested energy in time intervals of a few seconds or fractions of a second once they have been firstly activated. Therefore, such an approach has potential to be used for real-world energy- autonomous applications of SHM.

Les capteurs sans fil ont un avenir prometteur c’est pourquoi leur développement est àl’origine de nombreuses recherches. Leur autonomie reste cependant un problème à résoudre.Les travaux de cette thèse se concentrent précisément sur cette problématique : trouverune stratégie permettant aux capteurs d’être autonomes en énergie.L’énergie nécessaire à l’alimentation du capteur, quel que soit son mode de fonctionnement,doit en effet être récupérée de l’environnement dans lequel le capteur se trouve. Deplus, en cas d’absence ou d’insuffisance d’énergie environnante, le fonctionnement du capteurdoit pouvoir perdurer. À cela s’ajoute la nécessité de connaitre à tout instant la quantitéd’énergie disponible afin de pouvoir maintenir un niveau de charge constant et ainsi prolongerla vie du capteur. Enfin, toute cette gestion de l’énergie doit pouvoir garantir le meilleurrendement possible.Cette étude a conduit à la conception et au test d’un circuit en technologie CMOS 90nm.Ce même circuit a été intégré dans les capteurs sans fil d’un réseau en cours de développement.Et enfin, une méthode permettant de connaitre le niveau d’énergie embarquée a étémise au point et pourra permettre à l’avenir la conception d’un nouveau circuit de power managementpour capteurs autonomes en énergie. / Wireless sensors have a bright future so their development is causing a lot of research.However, their autonomy is still an issue.This work focuses on this problem : find a strategy for the sensors to be autonomous.The energy required to power the sensor, whatever its working mode, must indeed be harvestedfrom the environment wherein the sensor is located. Moreover, in case of absence ora lack of available energy, the sensor has to keep working. Additionnaly the state-of-chargehas to be known in real time in order to extend the sensor lifetime. Finally, the energy managementhas to give the highest efficiency.This study led to the design and the test of a circuit in CMOS 90nm technology. Thiscircuit was integrated in wireless sensors for networks under development. Finally, a methodto estimate the level of energy in the sensor has been developed and will allow to design anew circuit of power management for wireless sensor network.

Electronics miniaturization is an ever-important subject in the industry of consumer electronics, where smaller, lighter and more powerful electronics is expected. This thesis investigates the miniaturization challenge in the EU-funded project SOMIRO, that aims to construct an energy autonomous swimming millirobot for remote sensing in in agriculture. The current prototype Generation 1 (G1) prototype design is used as a base and a smaller version with additional features is constructed to evaluate possible performance differences. The Printed Circuit Board (PCB) that is produced is of a folding flex-rigid construction that sandwiches several layers of components to fit all components required. The performance of the new Generation 2 (G2) prototype is very similar to the existing G1 prototype in all electrical performance tests with the notable exception being the current draw for actuation of the swimming platform. The G2 prototype consumes significantly less current in this case, which is beneficial for the limited energy availability the millirobot will be operating in. There is still room for improving the PCB design with additional advanced PCB manufacturing techniques. Some of the external parts for the final version of the millirobot still needs to be finalized, for which this PCB may need additional changes, but this is not part of this thesis. / Miniatyrisering av elektronik är ett ständigt aktuellt problem i industrin för konsumentelektronik, där mindre, lättare och mer kraftfulla produkter förväntas. Detta mastersarbete undersöker miniatyriseringsutmaningen i EU-projektet SOMIRO som ska utveckla en energiautonom simmande millirobot för distribuerad mätning inom vattenbaserade jordbruk. Den nuvarande prototypen, Generation 1 (G1), lägger grunden till detta arbete som producerar en mindre version som dessutom innehåller fler funktioner. Den nya prototypen, Generation 2 (G2), utvärderas och jämförs med G1-versionen för att se om det är någon skillnad i elektrisk prestanda. Kretskortet som konstrueras är hopvikbart för att få plats med alla komponenter. Det nya kortet presterar mycket likt G1-versionen, förutom i testet för drivningen av aktuatorplattformen, där det nya kortet drog mindre ström. Det är en fördel då en mycket begränsad mängd energi kommer finnas tillgänglig i de tänkta miljöerna för milliroboten. Det finns fortfarande förbättringsmöjligheter då ytterligare avancerade konstruktionstekniker kan användas i design och tillverkning av kretskortet för att minska storleken ytterligare. Vissa förändringar kan också krävas för att kretskortet ska kunna monteras ihop med de externa delarna som ingår i den kompletta milliroboten, vilket dock inte är del av detta arbete.