A single sediment-microbial fuel cell powering a wireless telecommunication system

We report the ability of a single sediment-microbial fuel cell (MFC) to power wireless sensor network (WSN) nodes. Such a system is able to collect information from sensors and to transmit it to sinks. In particular, the PowWow platform presented here is combining an open and modular hardware design with an open-source software with a very light memory footprint and relying on event-driven programming. It includes energy harvesting capabilities and is able to adapt its radio data transmission behavior to the available energy supplied by the sediment-MFC. The MFC developed in this study successfully powered the WSN and results showed very stable performances over a long time frame with a high rate of signals sent from a source to a receptor connected to a computer. This sediment-MFC is moreover simple to produce and handle, with no membrane or artificial catalysts. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.