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