Course: Energy-autonomous embedded systems and the Internet-of-Things

Course content
During the last two decades we have seen a tremendous rise of opportunities and technology in the areas of sensor technology, data processing and communication, and wireless (as well as wired) network technology. This has lead, together with an on-going trend in miniaturization and integration of sensors and electronics, to the concept - and in part the advent - of the so-called Internet of Things: Small functional units, in most cases wireless electronic sensor systems, are distributed across large environments and serve as distributed network nodes, in order to acquire, process and transmit data in a complex networking fashion. Reaching from consumer and biomedical applications over industrial process control and smart home appliances to environmental sensing and precision agriculture, this Internet-of-Things may span, in a near future, over almost every area of our daily living.

When addressing this topic, every designer, potential supplier or user of this technology will run into complex questions of system design, operation and application, related to the following basic questions :

• How to supply an embedded system node with energy, with mimimum effort in installation, maintenance and cost?
• How to enable a reliable operation of the same, given a limited on-site energy budget and detrimental influences onto e.g. wireless communication ?
• How to operate such systems in different application scenarios with their respective requirements and boundary conditions?

This one-day course will give a basic insight and overview on these three questions, with a focused discussion of energy-autonomous embedded systems, using energy harvesting for their supply instead of costly and maintenance-intensive power grids or batteries. This will continue into concepts of local energy storage, wireless communication and, finally, application-adapted system design. Practical case scenarios and demonstrated applications are shown e.g. for consumer applications, smart home, environmental sensing or industrial process control.

Target group
This course is targeted to
- Development engineers (electronics, embedded systems, IoT)
- Product managers in the tech/IoT sector
- R&D managers and Intellectual Property managers
- Technical project managers
- Innovation managers
- Purchasers of technical systems
- Technically experienced decision-makers (C-level, divisional management)
- University-related specialists (e.g. applied research)
- Patent-related people

Language
The course is held in English.

Registration deadline
November 03, 2025

Cancellation conditions
If you cancel up to two weeks before the date of the event, you will still owe 50% of the participation fee; after that or in the event of non-attendance, you will still owe the full amount (100%). A substitute can be named at any time.

Course instructor
Prof. Dr. Peter Woias is a full professor and head of the Laboratory on Engineering Design of MEMS at the Dept. of Microsystems Engineering (IMTEK) of the Albert-Ludwig-University Freiburg, Germany. His actual research focuses on microfluidics for medical applications, chemical micro process engineering, micro energy technology and microfabrication. He is, at the moment, member of the Cluster of Excellence livMatS, where he directs research area A named “Energy Conversion and Storage”. His own research in energy harvesting is on piezoelectric, triboelectric, electret and thermoelectric generators, on power management electronics and on energy-autonomous embedded systems.