Preface

Chapter 9 **Power consumption Assessment in Wireless Sensor**

Antonio Moschitta and Igor Neri

Chapter 10 **Autonomous Sensors: Existing and Prospective**

Francesco Orfei and Giulia Orecchini

**Networks 203**

**VI** Contents

**Applications 225**

This book deals with the relationship between the fast growing field of Information and Communica‐ tion Technology (ICT) and the energy necessary to power this growth. In the last twenty years there has been an explosion of popularity in portable ICT devices.

The electronic technology, fostered by a fast-developing semiconductor industry, has made impressive progress in reducing the size of the basic element of the machinery of computation: the transistor. The CMOS field effect transistor (FET) is just the recent acquisition in this chain of products, of smaller and smaller size. Such a continuous decrease has produced a rapid increase in the computational density of standard microprocessors. Such a continuous growth from the scaling to smaller dimensions, however, is now facing an end due to the relevant heat production as a side effect of the computation process.

Further development of the technology in portable devices is presently at stake if we do not find a way to bridge the gap between the amount of energy required to operate such devices and the amount of energy available from portable/mobile sources. The only viable solution appears to be to attack the gap from both sides, i.e. to reduce the amount of energy dissipated during computation and to improve the efficiency in energy harvesting technologies.

In this book we list a number of contributions that address the various aspects of these two approaches, starting from the description of the fundamental limits in energy dissipation attainable in the basic ele‐ ments of computing devices and comparing them to the actual figures from the present CMOS technol‐ ogy. Energy harvesting is discussed in great detail. We present contributions from a team of scientists that are actively involved in the challenge to make energy harvesting more efficient and reliable and represent the forefront of the scientific and technological research in the field of micro and nanoscale energy harvesting devices.

This book is realized with the contribution of the project "ZEROPOWER: Co-ordinating Research Efforts Towards Zero-Power ICT" funded under the Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) programme of the Seventh Framework Programme for Research of the European Commission (Grant Agreement n. 270005).

> **Giorgos Fagas** EU Programme Coordinator Tyndall National Institute - University College Cork Lee Maltings, Dyke Parade, Cork, Ireland

> > **Luca Gammaitoni** NiPS Laboratory, Università di Perugia, Italy

**Douglas Paul** University of Glasgow, School of Engineering, Rankine Building, U.K

> **Gabriel Abadal Berini** Departament d'Enginyeria Electrònica, Escola d'Enginyeria Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona , Barcelona, Spain

**Chapter 1**
