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Wi-Fi Power Harvesting

Wi-Fi Power Harvesting

The merging of two projects has resulted in the concept of harvesting power to charge a supercapacitor. The Haute Tech Lab is developing a proof of concept for textile energy storage and harvesting. Antennas are tuned to harvest or scavenge energy at 2.4 GHz from the Wi-Fi frequency band. The antenna is fully knitted from conductive yarns on our industrial knitting machines. It is connected to a small circuit that can collect the harvested signals for specific applications. This harvested energy can either be used to power other textile devices or can be stored in a supercapacitor, which is embedded in the same piece of fabric. Custom-fitted pockets can be made to house non-textile components, and conductive leads can be knitted as a part of the fabric to connect all system components. Contact us at functionalfabrics@drexel.edu for more information.

Collaborators

Genevieve Dion, MID Center for Functional Fabrics, Drexel University; Department of Design, Westphal College of Media Arts & Design, Drexel University
Kapil Dandekar, PhD Drexel Wireless System Lab, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
College of Engineering, Drexel University
Yury Gogotsi, PhD AJ Drexel Nanotechnology Institute, Materials Science and Engineering
College of Engineering, Drexel University

PUBLICATIONS

Patron D, Jost K, Cook A, Fisher J, Le M, Watt S, Gogotsi Y, Dandekar K, Dion G. 2014. Knitted Wireless Power Harvesting and Storage. In: The Fiber Society 2014 Fall Meeting and Technical Conference; 2014 October 22-24; Philadelphia, PA.

Patents

Wearable Power Harvesting System | Drexel Ref. 14-1645D | U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 61/950,472 Filed 3/10/2014