A highly adaptive real-time water wave sensing array for marine applications

Abstract

The ocean accounts for about 70% of the Earth's surface area. In recent years, there has been increasing research into large-scale power generation device networks for ocean energy and the number of mobile sensing nodes in the ocean is expected to increase with the operation of the Internet of Things (IoT). Since water waves are low-frequency intermittent energy, they are suitable for harvesting and sensing by a triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) with high conversion efficiency, flexible structural design, and environmental friendliness. Furthermore, TENG-units are suitable for large-scale water waves. We proposed a 6 × 4 cross-vertical double-layer electrode array device to sense and restore the water wave state. The design of this structure can refine the waveform display while reducing the electrode interfaces and achieving efficient and accurate sensing of the water wave. Then we developed a complete display system combined with the device and demonstrated the superior performance of each unit and the whole array both on a curved surface and underwater. It can be expected that the device and the system will have great potential in maritime applications.