Edited by Giorgos Fagas, Luca Gammaitoni, Douglas Paul and Gabriel Abadal Berini, ISBN 978-953-51-1218-1, 244 pages, Publisher: InTech, Chapters published February 12, 2014 under CC BY 3.0 license

DOI: 10.5772/55410

This is a textbook about energy and its use in Information and Communication Technology (ICT).

Energy markets are providing as much energy as people need, at price they can afford. Society and Science are walking in parallel way and so they can collaborate to improve the world. The problem is to make efficient the ICT-Energy relation that it will be the most effective way of stimulating the economy.

The goal of this textbook is to sustain the future for information society relying on bridging the gap between the energy required operating portable ICT devices with the energy available from portable/mobile sources. The only viable solution is attacking 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. This requires deeper and broader knowledge of fundamental processes and thorough understanding of how they apply to materials and engineering at the nano-scale, all the way up to the design of energy-efficient electronics. This textbook is a first attempt to discuss such concepts towards Zero-Power ICT. The content is accessible to advanced undergraduates and early year researchers fascinated by this topic.

The textbook is divided in 10 chapters giving an answer for any question. The first chapter talks about the efficiency of the ICT-Energy. The conclusions were reached in open discussions by Giorgas Fagas, Luca Gammaitoni, Douglas Paul and Gabriel Abadal Berini giving results and solutions for reducing the Energy required in new services and products. They continue discussing for micro and nano-scale wireless sensors, matching problems with solutions, standards and metrology, potential ethical and societal issues.

In the second chapter Luca Gammaitoni discusses the role of Energy with specific attention to the processes that happens at micro and nano-scale. They are the scales where the modern ICT devices are built and operated. He analyses the Energy and its transformation in base of the two laws, thereafter discus about the microscopic perspective. In the point four of the second chapter he explains the meaning of “irreversible”. In the fifth one gives a probable relation between fluctuation – dissipation relation. At last he writes about Energy transformations for small systems. “While technological Energy device input information, produce Energy then create information and Energy.” said Gammaitoni. He lets the subject on Energy without a definition as a call or a possibility for other scientist to continue the story in infinity as numbers are.

In the third chapter Helios Vocca and Francesco Cottone talk about Kinetic Energy Harvesting giving it as a solution for charging batteries instead of changing them. They have given different examples in charging batteries. They have shown the theory with examples catching the Energy from buildings, vibrating machineries, transportations, ocean waves and human beings. This Energy can be converted to power mobile devices.

In the fourth chapter Douglas Paul talks about the Thermoeletric Energy Harvesting. The discussion continues throughout the studies of Thomas Johann Seeback in 1822, Jean Charles Athanase Peltier in 1834 after that Lord Kelvin taking results in the efficiency of the thermoeletric generation process derived by Edmund Altenkirch in 1911.

In the fifth chapter Gabriel Abadal, Javier Alda and Jordi Agusti  tell about Electro Magnetic Energy Harvesting and the Rectena Based Approach. They treat the most important concepts to understand haw Energy from the electromagnetic spectrum can be harvested by means of the rectenna technology have been introduced illustrating different examples.

In the sixth chapter James F. Rohan, Maksudul Hasa, Sanjay Patil, Declan P. Casey and Tomas Clancy discuss about Energy Storage: Battery Materiales and Architectures at the Nanoscale giving their results.

In the seventh chapter Victor Zhirnov, Ralph Cavin and Luca Gammaitoni write about Minimum Energy of Computing, Fundamental Considerations reviewing some of the basic principles governing Energy consumption in ICT and discuss future perspectives toward more efficient computers giving their results and ideas and opening a discussion for public.

In the eighth chapter Naser Khosro Pour, Francois Krummenaches and Maher Kayal write about Eletronics for Power and Energy Management discussing about the challenges in designing Energy harvester for wireless sensing applications.

In the ninth chapter Antonio Moschitta and Igor Neri have given some results in power consumption assessment in Wireless sensor Networks underlining tradeoffs of each methodology and discussing the achievable accuracy.

In the last chapter Giulia Orecchini and Francesco Orfei give an idea about Autonomous Sensors Exsting and Prospective Applications using the Energy available from environment.

In conclusion this book represents the results of the work developed around the Zeropower project (FET Proactive VII FP) and it is an open invitation to continue the research to the ICT-ENERGY with ideas and results that the authors of this textbook has written.