Sensitivity Analysis of Free-Standing Columnar Magnetic Field Energy Harvester for Powering Wireless Monitoring Sensors

Magnetic field energy harvesting is the effective method to power the monitoring sensors by capturing the magnetic field around the current-carrying structures. However, conventional toroidal magnetic field energy harvester (MFEH) face challenges in meeting the requirements of high anti-saturation characteristics and convenient installation. These limitations hinder the advancement of magnetic field energy scavenging. This paper introduces the integration of the columnar MFEH and the low-power current sensor to enable current status monitoring of the power equipment. The sensitivity of free-standing columnar magnetic field energy harvester is analyzed using the method of magnetic flux block superposition at first. Accordingly, comprehensive studies are conducted on various parameters such as the number of turns, the winding configurations, magnetic core dimension and the through-hole radius of the magnetic core. Further, the operational performance of the energy harvester is investigated in scenarios involving offset and rotation. The experiment evaluations of the proposed design are presented by powering the wireless current sensor periodically. The experimental results demonstrate that the periodic wireless chip current sensor can be driven under a 300 A power line current with intervals of 29 seconds. As a result, the proposed solution proves to be highly effective in scavenging magnetic field energy around power lines and can be employed to power wireless monitoring sensors.