An automated measurement bench for vibration-based energy harvesting systems

A measurement bench has been developed to fully automate the procedure for the characterization of a vibration-based energy scavenging system. The measurement system is capable of monitoring all important characteristics of a vibration harvesting system (input and output voltage, current, and other parameters, frequency and acceleration values, etc). It is composed of a PC, typical digital measuring instruments (oscilloscope, waveform generator, etc), certain sensors and actuators, along with a microcontroller based automation module. The automation of the procedure and the manipulation of the acquired data are performed by LabVIEW software. Typical measurements of a system consisting of a vibrating source, a vibration transducer and an active rectifier are presented.