EnABLES – European infrastructure powering the Internet of Things

By 2025, there will be an estimated one billion IoT devices worldwide, all of which need to be powered. The project aims to eliminate the need for battery replacement wherever possible through the use of Energy Harvesting solutions and to find ways to significantly reduce device power consumption. The EnABLES project involves hundreds of researchers and developers working to advance Energy Harvesting, storage and micro-power management solutions for the integrated design and deployment of miniaturized autonomous sensors. The EnABLES offer ranges from technologies and simulation models to the design of devices and systems. The EnABLES institutes support stakeholders and IoT developers and manufacturers to accelerate the adoption of this technology in real-world applications.

The institutes offer their know-how and infrastructure for the development of »self-sufficient« sensor solutions. Based on the areas of Energy Harvesting, energy storage, micro-power design, power management and system integration, the project will provide free access to simulations, laboratories and expertise (e.g. in concept and feasibility studies). Through the so-called Transnational Access (TA) program, which was published in July 2018, cooperation between interested companies and the EnABLES institutes will take place in a simple and fast way.

The TA providers are the Tyndall National Institute (Coordinator, Ireland), CEA (Leti & Liten), Fraunhofer IIS, Fraunhofer IMS (Germany) and imec (Netherlands). In addition, the universities of Southampton and Perugia offer virtual access to databases of vibration data from real applications. EnABLES also finances joint research activities (JRAs) between the above-mentioned partners together with the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, the Politecnico di Torino and the University of Bologna. It is foreseen that JRAs will lead to future TA offerings.

EnABLES will bring together key European research infrastructures to power the Internet of Things (IoT):

1. Providing access infrastructure to six world-leading research and technology centers, complemented by five interdisciplinary knowledge centers for excellence in pioneering research that integrate and foster the growth of an IoT energy community.
2. Leveraging Europe's unique leadership in Energy Harvesting, energy storage and micro-power management to enable the development and deployment of miniaturized autonomous sensors.
3. Accelerating the development of cross-sectional solutions that bridge the gap between the power requirements of typical applications and Energy Harvesting to realize autonomous wireless devices.
4. Accelerating the innovation of IoT devices and extract the value of the resulting autonomous sensors through implementation and use in real world conditions.
5. Capturing the innovation potential of miniaturized autonomous sensors in various IoT applications and services by developing a community to support the integration and positioning of European communities in powering IoT devices.

By 2025, there will be one billion IoT devices worldwide that require power. The challenge is to eliminate (or significantly reduce) the need for battery replacement by developing Energy Harvesting and energy storage solutions while reducing the power consumption of the IoT device. With easy access to key infrastructure and know-how, EnABLES will bring together researchers and industry users to develop application-centric solutions for IoT devices and systems.

By designing, characterizing and optimizing Energy Harvesting systems, Fraunhofer IIS provides access to labs with different measurement devices, generators and power management test-kits as well as platforms for the EnABLES project.

Typical applications are the development of harvesting systems with available building blocks such as thermoelectric generators, vibration transducers or solar modules, voltage converters and storage devices for specific use-cases.

The labs of Fraunhofer IIS provide the following equipment and technical offers:

Examples of offers can be viewed on the EnABLES website and an online request form is available at www.enables-project.eu. All results of EnABLES Transnational Access (TA) and Virtual Access (VA) activities will be made publicly available as part of EnABLES' goal to build a collaborative ecosystem that generates miniaturized and autonomous sensors. EnABLES is already bringing together a consortium of 130 researchers, providing access to a research infrastructure of more than € 2 billion.