Sigfox, HT Micron and Nowi Develop Energy Harvesting Device

At CES 2022, communication service provider Sigfox announced a partnership with Brazilian semiconductor solutions provider HT Micron, and energy harvesting power management technology expert Nowi. Together, the companies plan to explore and unlock the benefits of integrating energy harvesting into Sigfox devices.

This marks Sigfox’s first step towards a commercial development of energy harvesting modules to equip IoT devices, thus contributing to more sustainability in IoT. Among the key use cases are applications in Smart metering, industrial sensoring, asset tracking and air quality monitoring.
HT Micron has worked on creating an innovative semiconductor solution to be integrated with Nowi’s Energy Harvesting Power Management Integrated Circuit (PMIC) designed especially for low power IoT devices. Equipped on Sigfox devices and powered by the 0G technology, this solution will help reduce battery consumption and offer longer autonomy while reducing the total cost of ownership.
PMIC is designed to extract power from ambient energy sources like light and vibration to charge a variety of energy storage elements such as rechargeable batteries or a capacitors. It is best suited for most low power applications like distributed IoT sensors and TV remote controls for example.

The low power consumption of Sigfox solutions is particularly well suited to being powered by ambient energy harvesting. As many Sigfox-based applications require intermittent communication intervals, this allows for trickle charging a storage element with energy harvesting in between transmissions,

explains Chris Juliano, CCO at Nowi.

We are glad to take this next step with Sigfox and explore energy harvesting solutions as a new way to create added value to our end customers and help them improve their environmental impact,

said Edelweis Ritt, CIO at HT Micron.

This collaboration with Nowi and HT Micron is another proof point towards our ambition to create IoT solutions that will help our clients preserve the environment by greatly reducing their energy consumption. We are looking forward to the development of this new kind of devices and to the positive impact they will generate

said Benjamin Jooris, Client & Ecosystem Success Director at Sigfox.
The first step of this project will be a development kit integrating Nowi’s PMIC solution with HT Micron’s Sigfox system-in-package. It will be used for testing purposes by R&D and product development teams. Customers can register to receive the development kit. Next, Sigfox, Nowi and HT Micron will create a mass production module that can be used by any type of device maker.

Author: Rainer Claaßen
Image Credit: Sigfox

Source: https://www.smart-industry.net/sigfox-ht-micron-and-nowi-develop-harvesting-device/