Adream seminar

23 octobre 2012

 
Apostolos Georgiadis, PhD
Senior Research Associate CTTA
Avda Carl Friedrich Gauss 7 08864 Castelldefels - Barcelone ( Espagne)
Email: ageorgiadis@cttc.es Tel: +34 93 6452900 Ext 2180

Autonomous Wireless Sensors and RFID's: Energy harvesting, Material and Circuit Challenges
9 nov., 10 h 30, salle Europe, LAAS-CNRS

The presentation begins with an overview of energy considerations and challenges for low power system requirements in emerging applications such as health and smart homes, environmental monitoring, as well as an outlook of various energy harvesting technologies. The state-of-the-art in commonly used energy harvesting technologies such as solar, piezoelectric, thermal and electromagnetic is then presented. Figures of merit are provided and emphasis is placed on design challenges and novel technologies and materials, such as paper, textiles, inkjet printing.
Special focus is placed on hybrid–multiple technology harvesters leading to the development of low profile and conformal solar antennas and solar–electromagnetic harvesters. Design and optimization challenges are provided. Nonlinear circuit optimization combined with electromagnetic analysis is used to optimize circuit performance, and design methodologies for ultra-wideband and multiband RF energy harvesters are presented. Continued interest in electromagnetic energy harvesting is attributed to the minimum additional cost associated with its implementation due to existing antenna modules on wireless sensor nodes and RFIDs, as well as due to the capability for powering of wireless devices by intentional radiation known as wireless power transmission. The latter is addressed and novel system concepts such as transmission of chaotic signals for optimum performance are proposed. Circuit and system examples of autonomous system operation are demonstrated such as wirelessly powered sensors, beacon signal generators, energy harvesting applied to RFID systems. Finally, future perspectives and challenges are discussed in terms of energy storage, materials, and circuit performance and application scenarios.
 
Biography
Apostolos Georgiadis was born in Thessaloniki, Greece. He received his B.S. degree in physics and M.S. degree in telecommunications from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, in 1993 and 1996, respectively. He received his Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, in 2002. In 2002, he joined Global Communications Devices (GCD), North Andover, Massachusetts, as a systems engineer involved with CMOS transceivers for WiFi applications. In 2005, he joined the University of Cantabria in Santander, Spain as a researcher. Since 2007, he is a Senior Research Associate at Centre Tecnològic de Telecomunicacions de Catalunya (CTTC), Barcelona, Spain, where he is involved in active antennas and antenna arrays and with radio-frequency identification (RFID)  technology and energy harvesting. He was the Chair of the 2011 IEEE RFID Technologies and Applications (RFID-TA) Conference and the Chair of the 2011 IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Workshop Series (IMWS) on “Millimeter Wave Integration Technologies”. He was the co-recipient of the EUCAP 2010 Best Student Paper Award and the ACES 2010 2nd Best Student Paper Award. He was the Chairman of EU COST Action IC0803, RF/Microwave communication subsystems for emerging wireless technologies (RFCSET), and presently is the Coordinator of Marie Curie Industry-Academia Pathways and Partnerships project EU FP7-251557 Symbiotic Wireless Autonomous Powered system (SWAP). He is an IEEE Senior Member and Chair of IEEE MTT-S TC-24 RFID Technologies. He is Chair of the IEEE MTT-S TC-24 RFID Technologies and Member of IEEE MTT-S TC-26 Wireless Energy Transfer and Conversion. He serves at the Editorial board of the Radioengineering Journal and as an Associate Editor of the IET Microwaves Antennas and Propagation Journal.