By 2025 the world will have 1 trillion IoT (internet of things) sensors, most of which will be wireless IoT edge devices. IoT brings unprecedented opportunities and potentially will enhance all our lives putting sensors everywhere (on, in and near equipment, infrastructure, people, environment) to make the world a better, safer, more secure, reliable, environmentally aware and efficient place. However it also bring unprecedented problems if battery life is limited.
EnABLES helps users understand how ‘battery life’ can be extended to outlive the operational life of the device it powers by finding ways to minimize device power consumption where possible using ambient energies. This encompasses:- energy harvesting, energy storage, micro-power management and their system integration. Another key element is getting developers & users of these technologies to come together as an ecosystem and ensure technology components are standardized, inter-operable and system optimized.
EnABLES offers a ‘transnational access’ (TA) program opening up €2Bn of key research infrastructure and a pool of >130 researchers to academia and industry to do ‘power IoT’ feasibility studies coupled with a joint research activity (JRA) portfolio (collaborative projects between the 11 project partners) demonstrating the impact of collaboration and developing application driven ‘power IoT’ solutions for the future.
The consortium comprises 6 research & technology centres (Tyndall, CEA-Leti, CEA-Liten, FhG-IIS, FhG-IMS and Imec-NL) that provide the TA offering. JRAs focus on developing the necessary tools, protocols, libraries and databases as well as advancing the state-of-the-art of prototype platforms, test structures, simulation models and tools. The consortium also incorporates knowledge hubs of excellence (KIT/HIU, U-Southampton, U-Perugia, U-Bologna, POLITO) who (along with the research and technology centres) are responsible for the JRAs delivering frontier research across various disciplines e.g. materials science, modelling & simulation, fabrication, device engineering, metrology, characterisation, circuit design and system integration. The EnABLES Virtual Access offering leverages the Real Vibrations Database & Energy Harvesting Network Data Repository provided resp. by Knowledge Hubs U-Perugia and U-Southampton to help people how much energy can be extracted from various ambient energies.
The ultimate aim of EnABLES is to build the ecosystem descried, show the benefits and impact with a supporting access infrastructure and make it sustainable beyond the life of the project.
EnABLES has been extremely successful:-
We now have 557 stakeholders from 46 countries. 171 TA enquiries were funded and 37 VAs made available. 86 publications and 16 webinars were created. Many have resulted in follow on projects and collaboration funded by the EU national government and industry. Testimonials and impact assessment on our TA & JRA activities can be found in our position paper and website.
