Towards Sustainable Personal Computing Devices through Energy Harvesting

This PhD project builds upon existing research in DistriNet on low power design, energy harvesting, and long life electronics in the area of the Internet of Things (IoT) as well as the candidate's master’s thesis work on the simulation of photovoltaic cells. The candidate will investigate hardware and software techniques to create personal computing devices (smart displays, phones, tablets, laptops) that can operate for decades on harvested environmental power. By eliminating battery replacement and extending device lifetime, waste and environmental damage will be significantly reduced. We expect this research trajectory to result in a mix of: hardware, software and modeling contributions in the area of energy harvesting, energy management and low power design. Target conferences include: EuroSys, ATC, SenSys, IPSN, EWSN, DCOSS, IoT and WF-IoT as well as journals such as TIOT and TOSN. The work will be conducted in the context of numerous energy harvesting IoT projects such as: ICONWiPer (energy harvesting for industrial monitoring) and C3-CDK (solar powered e-ink displays).