ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces two types of small-scale wind energy harvesting (WEH) schemes: the direct WEH approach using a wind turbine generator; and the indirect WEH approach using piezoelectric material. It describes the details of the wind energy conversion system and determines the output power available at each stage of the system. The chapter discusses the issues related to the design of an efficient power management circuit to interface the wind turbine generator and the wireless sensor node. In the WEH system, the power management unit is used to take care of the dynamics of both the wind turbine generator subjected to environmental condition variations such as varying wind speeds as well as the power-aware wireless sensor node operating at the deployment site. The active alternating current-direct current converter can be separated into two stages: the negative voltage converter and the active diode.
