Energy Harvesting (EH) and the Power IoT Ecosystem 

Energy harvesting (a.k.a. – energy scavenging) is the ability to capture energy from pretty much any form afforded us by the world of physics and convert that into usable, electrical power.  While still considered an emerging technology space, EH has been around for 100s of years (even 1,000s when considering things like windmills, etc.) in the form of hydrodynamic generators spinning turbines for utility generation to the first transistor radios that captured RF energy to power small units to even what has powered nearly all our extraterrestrial exploration to date by harvesting photovoltaic and thermal energy.  This talk will give a brief overview of the types of EH modalities that exist and examples of how they map to applications (particularly in the Internet of Things or IoT & Industrial IoT or IIoT).  We shall see how there is a massive, Power IoT ecosystem to support this space with constituents ranging from startups to the most mature and largest semiconductor players on the planet.  Additionally, there will be summaries of the major design challenges associated with an intermittent energy source and some best practices for mitigation.  Understanding the connection between milliwatts and megawatts can be a fascinating and eye-opening experience for new designers to apply to just about any engineering discipline and system size/application.