The massive growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) and the unsustainable maintenance and environmental cost of tens-of-millions of battery changes per day is driving developments of indoor photovoltaic (IPV) technologies. These can harvest energy from indoor artificial light sources to power IoT and wearable devices avoiding the need for battery changes. Development, commercialisation and volume production of IPV products requires characterisation tools like indoor light simulators to measure and compare device performance. Accurate output of such equipment needs to be confirmed. Until recently the development of IPV has been constrained by a lack of accepted standard performance characterisation methodologies and tools. This has now been addressed with the recent publication of a new IEC standard document. Ensuring traceable measurements when using light simulators (e.g. Lightricity's LightBox or various bespoke laboratory rigs) requires appropriately calibrated reference devices to maintain traceability. Lightricity's own IPV technology is uniquely stable and spectrally matched to indoor light spectra making it ideal as the basis of a reference cell. We have already developed and sold an IPV reference cell product which can be used as a reference cell for irradiance calibration for indoor light simulators, or integrated on our modular indoor light simulator product range (LightBox). Nevertheless, due to the lack of standards for IPV reference cell requirements and calibration methodologies, this product cannot yet be used as a calibrated reference by customers. This proposed project aims to improve the reference cell product to better meet customer needs in a portable, more widely transferrable device design by addressing a series of measurement and methodology challenges. Doing this requires access to expertise and equipment at the National Physical Laboratory which are beyond Lightricity's own capabilities and are not commercially available.

Lightricity has developed and commercialised world leading efficiency photovoltaic (PV) technology which is up to 6x better at harvesting energy than commercially available silicon-based PV. This renewable energy source can enable the IoT to overcome the barriers of battery-related waste and maintenance costs thus enabling it to be more scalable and sustainable. The PV components are manufactured in a distributed, outsourced supply chain, as is typical in the semiconductor industry. In recent years Lightricity have sought to migrate manufacturing of its PV component and systems to Europe and the UK in order to address a range of shortcomings of offshore production including responsiveness for customisation and disruptions of supply. We have options for all stages of manufacture in Europe and the UK now other than the assembly packaging and test step. Through a feasibility stage study, we worked with various UK packaging houses to investigate assembly, packaging and test capabilities and limitations. We have established that our packaging requirements can be addressed in the UK by a combination of transfer of more established techniques from Asia and the development of novel capabilities here in the UK. Working with Alter Technology we identified routes to developing the required flexibility in dam-and-fill encapsulation for the range of our custom designed PV products. In this new project we need to work with Alter further to transfer clear moulding techniques for more standardised, lower-cost, high-volume mass-market production as well as co-develop innovative new methods which go beyond the current state-of-the-art and would enable mass manufacture of new product categories. This will bridge the gap from UK's strength in compound semiconductor research to actual commercial volume production and will allow Lightricity to complete its supply chain migration from Asia to UK and Europe. Alter Technology UK have established a volume production line for plastic encapsulated packages using opaque (black) moulding compound. This project will enable Alter to further develop this capability with clear moulding techniques and materials for optical components. Alter's automated toolset combined with panel array moulding, offer scale-up to cost effective and flexible UK volume manufacture of packaged PV in various configurations for different applications for Lightricity, underpinning global opportunities to lead the scalable and sustainable deployment of the IoT. It will also give Alter the capability to address a much wider range of customer packaging requirements for optical devices e.g. in LED arrays and optical sensors used for industrial and medical applications.

It is well recognised that indoor air quality (IAQ) is an issue given the range of air pollutants present and the amount of time people spend indoors. Key air pollutants include CO2, VOCs, fine particulates, mould spores, CO and NO2 all with impacts on human health. Indoor air quality IAQ is influenced by weather, outdoor air quality, the season, the occupancy (e.g. public vs residential) and their behaviour/activities, the age and design of the building and the various pollutant emitters. There is a lack of measured IAQ and related parameters e.g. temperature, humidity and ventilation rate in most buildings and a lack of awareness of the variability within longer term averages. Measured data on a range of pollutants is needed to cover the available strategies of reducing the sources, improving the ventilation via whatever options are available and to support educating the occupants and building managers on these. Occupant's ventilation behaviours are predominantly driven by thermal comfort and energy consumption. Sensors are critical in delivering improvements but, beyond some smart buildings with sophisticated HVAC systems, are rarely deployed due to the cost of retrofitting and maintenance and the challenges of extracting actionable insights from the measured data. Lightricity has a prototype wireless indoor-environment sensor platform that is ready for deployment and could play a significant role in enabling the delivery of improved IAQ. Currently it measures CO2, temperature, humidity, light level, air pressure and can communicate wirelessly via Bluetooth LE or LoRA to fit different restrictions on gateway location. Importantly it is entirely powered by harvesting indoor light (e.g. LED) to enable easy fit-and-forget retrofitting and never needing to change a battery for lowest possible maintenance effort and cost. This removes a key barrier that has limited uptake of indoor air pollutant measurement. With its modular design we can add additional air pollutant sensors (for VOCs and fine particulates) along with enhanced data analysis to provide actionable insights to occupants and landlords. The project will focus mainly on scaled trials of our device in indoor environments where IAQ monitoring is most lacking and mitigation of air pollution can be managed through informed choices based on much better IAQ information. We have confirmed trial partners Blenheim Palace & Estates and Oxford Brookes University, both of whom wish to understand, monitor and mitigate indoor air pollutants, particularly in residential and leisure settings where automated ventilation options are limited.

Lightricity has developed prototype light-powered, BLE-based, beacons that can replace battery-powered beacons for navigation in digital wayfinding solutions. These solutions typically pair beacon devices located throughout buildings with a smart phone and mapping app to enable the user to navigate indoors around large buildings e.g. hospitals, museums, airports, shopping centres and office complexes. The main current constraint on wider adoption of these navigation solutions is that the beacons require a high beaconing rate (multiple times per second) to provide enough resolution of location data to moving people. This drives high demand on the batteries which typically last 6-12 months bringing high maintenance costs and significant environmental impact of battery waste and carbon impact of battery change activities. Our solution replaces the battery with an energy harvesting solution based on our patented indoor photovoltaic (PV) technology and power management architectures giving a maintenance-free and much more sustainable option. The light-powered beacons (4EverNav) are based upon adaptations to our already deployed light-powered asset-tracking tags (4EverTrack) which enable entirely battery-free operation. In a current 'Circular Economy for SMEs' project we have been focussed on exploring the feasibility of a range of approaches to further reduce the environmental impact of these products. Amongst these, some technical developments have enabled the spin-off benefit of enabling us to meet the requirements to deliver wayfinding beacon functionality with a very similar architecture. This project aims to overcome barriers to commercial adoption by carrying out a pilot with a wayfinding solution customer to validate performance. We will also address wider compatibility across different smart phone operating systems and ensure that the devices are designed compliant with the requirements for both CE and FCC certification in order to be accepted in the main global markets. Support with design for manufacture will ready us to progress to a commercial solution post-project.

Lightricity has developed and commercialised world leading efficiency photovoltaic (PV) technology which is up to 6x better at harvesting energy than commercially available silicon-based PV. This renewable energy source can enable the IoT to overcome the barriers of battery-related waste and maintenance costs thus enabling it to be more scalable and sustainable. In recent years Lightricity have sought to migrate manufacturing of its PV component and system to Europe and the UK in order to address a range of shortcomings of offshore production including responsiveness for customisation and disruptions of supply. We have options for all stages of manufacture in Europe and the UK now other than the assembly packaging and test step. There are UK packaging houses that have general capabilities in the packaging techniques of relevance, however, each has proven uncomfortable with what they perceive to be a high level of risk in applying these techniques to our PV due to requirements for custom shapes, small sizes, thickness reduction and ruggedisation. This inability to bridge the gap from semiconductor research to actual commercial volume production is an addressable shortcoming. This project therefore aims to address the feasibility of transferring our PV packaging stage to UK suppliers by carrying out technical de-risking activities at Lightricity and with selected packaging houses and transferring knowledge from our experiences working with overseas suppliers. We will focus, in particular, on packaging techniques combined with smart interconnect methods. By supporting the companies to overcome the risk hurdles, we will enable them to scale up to cost effective and flexible UK volume manufacture of packaged PV which can then underpin global opportunities to lead the scalable and sustainable deployment of the IoT.

Lightricity is an environmental impact focused company, aiming to eliminate the need for battery proliferation in many applications of IoT which threaten to add billions to trillions of batteries to environmental waste and huge cost and carbon footprint of battery-change activity. These scalability challenges are reducing the potential benefits of IoT. We address the battery challenge with our patented indoor-photovoltaic technology that is up to 6x more efficient than competing technologies and proprietary power management architectures that enable entirely battery-free devices and product form factors that work at light levels not previously possible. There are many applications of IoT, including for delivering sustainability and circular economy approaches for business, that can be enabled by our solution to the battery challenge. However, in doing so we still drive deployment of large numbers of electronic devices; albeit ones much more sustainable than battery-powered equivalents. To further optimise sustainability, we will review our existing products' BOM for assessment of sustainability and potential degradations/failure mechanisms (identifying first points of failure) and improve sustainability by exploring the feasibility of innovating technically at the power block and overall device level. Introducing circular economy options for extended device longevity, reuse, recycle and repair/upgrade will include modular design considerations that balance cost, practicality and benefit by enabling easy removal of components and subsystems. Additionally, significant miniaturisation could drive lower packaging, various scarce metals usage and other component content. Miniaturisation also makes overall tracking devices small enough for wider application on packaging/goods from cradle to grave in our customers circular economy optimised product lifecycles themselves. For customer convenience and value we will also investigate circular economy business model options that leverage and promote reusable components/subsystems.

Lightricity has developed world leading efficiency indoor photovoltaic (PV) technology capable of powering a multitude of small wireless devices e.g. for wearables and the Internet of Things (IoT) thus avoiding the sustainability and maintenance costs of battery power. The company currently sells its PV component technology to IoT device developers and also offers PV-powered IoT devices to systems integrators and IoT solution providers. In order to test our products in the full range of lighting conditions likely to be experienced by the devices and therefore demonstrate performance potential vs battery-powered devices, we developed a family of affordable, portable light simulators (LightBox). As well as helping address our internal needs, the LightBox is currently sold to researchers and PV-powered device developers. Our latest LightBox product (LightBox+) is a very low cost (under £100), fully integrated, portable and calibrated version that does not require an expensive and bulky source-meter to be interfaced with it. The objective is to make test capability much more widely available and affordable in a format that suits the much bigger market in education, commercial IoT device development, device performance evaluation and even hobbyists where accuracy and resolution demands are lower but costs are critical. Although it is functional, it needs to be improved to meet industry standards and reach full market acceptance. NPL and ASTUTE have been engaged through A4i to help with measurement and analysis support to solve measurement challenges relating to characterising and optimising performance and allowing choices for design for lowest cost manufacturing. They bring unique expertise and custom equipment not otherwise available commercially and a strong linkage to standards development for indoor PV technologies. This will increase customer confidence in the LightBox+ product and also underpin sales of our own PV component and PV-powered IoT device products.

Powering the various elements of IoT networks is a major constraint on the scale, installation and maintenance cost and sustainability, as IoT devices are typically either battery or mains-powered. Lightricity already addresses these limitations for the end-nodes (e.g. sensors/tracker tags), using its world-leading efficiency indoor photovoltaic technology to harvest energy from indoor and ambient lighting. This avoids the cost and inconvenience of ever having to change a battery, and the environmental impact of massive battery waste. Lightricity broadcast-only BLE-based tags/sensors are generally used in star topology IoT networks, where every tag communicates directly with a fixed (wired) gateway device receiving and passing data it to the backend (Cloud) for analytics. Gateways, however, are too power-hungry for harvested light energy. With typical BLE tags network range is limited by tag broadcast range, necessitating a gateway in every room, implying very large gateway numbers (many 100-1,000's) for big buildings e.g. airports, hospitals, warehouses, exhibition centres. Mesh networking topology addresses the cost, inconvenience and easy scalability of networks by adding battery-powered relays/anchors to massively reduce the need for gateways. These relays receive and send data from end-nodes and route network data optimally to a single or small number of gateways per building. They still require significantly more power than end-nodes. However, with recent improvements in mesh technology and a series of innovations we propose in this project, particularly to improve light capture, powering them with harvested light energy is now within reach. This project will make the vast majority of a mesh IoT network's infrastructure independent of battery or mains power thus achieving low cost, sustainable scalability. This proposed industrial stage R&D project aims to develop prototype light energy harvesting-powered BLE-based Wirepas Mesh relays and bidirectional sensor end-nodes. Crowd Connected will test the resulting devices in real environments that challenge the performance limits.

Lightricity aims to develop a light-powered wayfinding beacon product that makes inclusion of visually and mobility impaired people in indoor navigation systems both practically possible and economically viable. We will apply our patented, highly efficient, indoor PV (photovoltaic) technology and novel power management architectures to highly miniaturised battery-free wayfinding beacon devices. These maintenance-free devices will be designed for deployment at light fittings to ensure sufficient power for rapid beaconing and additional sensors in order to provide the required accuracy of location and other information that will enable audio guiding of the visually impaired and smart routing to help both the visually and mobility impaired navigate independently via the most accessible routes and avoiding obstacles. Our solution will address the current limitations of wayfinding solutions which are preventing IoT navigation solution providers from offering an inclusive service. Typically, they use battery-powered beacons for indoor navigation/wayfinding solutions in large buildings such as hospitals, transport hubs, shopping centres, offices and other public buildings. Hundreds to thousands of these devices placed in fixed locations in a building communicate directly with customer's mobile phones, helping them navigate routes on an App-based building map. These battery-powered beacons cannot be deployed at great enough density or with additional sensing function to add more inclusive functionality due to the high operational cost of having to change batteries every 6-12 months to maintain the required beaconing frequency and system accuracy.

Lightricity has developed world leading efficiency indoor photovoltaic (PV) technology capable of powering a multitude of small wireless devices e.g. for wearables and the Internet of Things (IoT). The company currently sells its unique indoor PV component technology to IoT device developers and also offers PV- powered IoT devices to systems integrators and IoT solution providers. In order to test our products in the full range of lighting conditions likely to be experienced by the devices and therefore demonstrate performance potential vs battery-powered devices, we have developed a family of affordable, portable light simulators (LightBox). As well as helping address our internal needs, the LightBox is currently sold to researchers and PV-powered device developers. Currently LightBox sales are limited by its accuracy and lack of confirmed performance relative to any validated measurement approaches. Accuracy is adequate for performance determination in relatively bright indoor lighting scenarios but is insufficient to accurately quantify PV and IoT device batch variability, longer term stability of performance and clear, verifiable differences in performances between technologies and devices at the lowest light levels. These are critical to us and other developers when working with ultra-low power electronics and very low levels of light. Additionally, our own PV-powered IoT devices would be more marketable if we can confirm their performance more accurately and by reference to verified characterisation of the LightBox. A significant barrier to customer adoption of light-powered IoT devices is being able to convince them of performance across the full range of lighting levels that they may encounter. A battery is a safe if rather short term, high maintenance and unsustainable power solution. We need to fully characterise and optimise the LightBox product in order to improve its performance. Working with the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) brings access to unique custom measurement capabilities, expertise and linkage to standards development. The project will help us improve the accuracy of the LightBox and ensure that it is aligned to future international standards. This will increase customer confidence in this product and make it a unique, low-cost testing tool for PV-powered IoT devices.

Lightricity will deliver a prototype, smart card compatible, photovoltaic (PV) power module with use-case functionality demonstrated within a smart card demonstrator including the array of industry-accepted security elements to be powered. This will utilise our patented and uniquely efficient PV technology and patented power management architectures. It will do so in the ISO standard card format and in compliance with the industry's various challenging manufacturing process and durability testing constraints. Utility under realistic illumination scenarios will be demonstrated. This will demonstrate to smart card industry companies already engaged that our PV power source solves the issues previously considered by them to be blockers. This project will pave the way for us to offer such companies a modular smart card power source for incorporation in their own new designs and manufactured products. This will be a game-changing new solution to an existing global and very significant problem experienced by the smart payment card industry. Global card fraud losses were £23.7bn in 2021 and the global smart card market of £3.4bn (2020) is projected to reach £6.2bn by 2027 with contactless smart card segment accounting for 64% of this. The objective is to enable the latest generation of powered smart cards with enhanced security features (fingerprint sensor biometrics and/or dynamic CVV displays) to be extended to countering the 75% of fraudulent card transactions that occur away from a point-of-sale (PoS) reader machine (Card Not Present or CNP transactions). Current enhanced security cards need the PoS reader to harvest RF energy at a few centimetres distance during contactless transactions so are ineffective against online and telephone transaction card fraud.

Methane is a significant contributor to global warming so reducing methane emissions, particularly from oil and gas operations, is among the most cost-effective, impactful actions governments can take to achieve climate goals. Preventing methane leakage impacts economic productivity and worker safety too. Large-site leak detection requires reliable cost-effective distributed sensors. Methane leakage is also an issue for several other industries. Distributed methane sensor networks would improve measurement regularity and granularity over current remote sensing survey approaches. However, hard wiring is not practical or cost effective and battery power is unacceptable due to the need for regular changes requiring engineers working in hazardous areas at great expense. The sustainability challenge of additional travel associated with device maintenance and disposal of used batteries in the millions is also environmentally unacceptable. Worker safety monitoring with lower-cost portable methane detectors requires bulky, rechargeable battery-powered devices that the industry is seeking to avoid for operational and environmental reasons. We combine and optimise Albasense's novel ultra-low-power methane sensor technology with Lightricity's world-leading high-efficiency PV technology and power management IP/expertise to deliver a world-first autonomous battery-free, light-powered long-range wireless methane sensor communicating via LoRa, minimising on-site gateway infrastructure. This will operate indoors and outdoors providing the granularity of measurement to allow much more widespread and cost-effective sensing in multiple applications. We target fixed sensor and wearable badge formats for use-case versatility. Device performance will be demonstrated over a representative range of methane levels and environmental conditions of relevance to projected use-cases with input from users and gas detector manufacturing companies.

In this project, Codegate and Lightricity will jointly develop an automated and self-powered smart inventory monitoring system (LuxBase) that can detect the weight and quantity of any product/item in picking bins, covering logistics, manufacturing and retail use-cases. This project will build on a previous feasibility study carried out by Codegate on smart bins based on passive RFID technology. The study highlighted some key drawbacks of RFID for such inventory applications: * the prohibitive cost and high number of required RFID readers * the limited range and accuracy of the RFID chip sensors * the regular replacement of batteries when using active RFID tags to increase device performance * the lack of compatibility/interoperability between competing inventory systems. This project aims to address the above costs and functional limitations of RFID by switching to a BLE-based wireless protocol and by using indoor and/or ambient light as a renewable source of energy to avoid the maintenance costs related to battery replacements. The consortium will focus on a retrofittable and interoperable solution that can be deployed at scale and at much lower cost than existing systems. The LuxBase system will combine high accuracy ultra-low power weight sensors and RF electronics, and Lightricity's unique indoor PV technology that can provide up to 6 times more power per area than commercially available alternatives. Up to hundreds of LuxBase will be able to connect to Codegate proprietary middleware and cloud platform. System calibration will be enabled by a dedicated Android-app that can operate on most smart phones. The system will be demonstrated in real use case situations at participating end users.

Lightricity has developed world leading efficiency indoor photovoltaic (PV) technology capable of powering a multitude of small wireless devices e.g. for wearables and the Internet of Things (IoT). The company currently sells its unique indoor PV component technology to IoT device developers and also offers PV-powered IoT devices to systems integrators and IoT solution providers. In order to test our products in the full range of lighting conditions likely to be experienced by the devices and therefore demonstrate performance potential vs battery-powered devices, we have developed a family of affordable, portable light simulators (Lightbox). As well as helping address our internal needs, the Lightbox is currently sold to researchers and PV-powered device developers. We need to fully characterise and optimise the Lightbox product in order to improve its performance. Working with the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) brings access to unique custom measurement capabilities, expertise and linkage to standards development. The project will help us improve the accuracy of the Lightbox and ensure that it is aligned to future international standards. This will increase customer confidence in this product and make it a unique, low-cost testing tool for PV-powered IOT devices.

Lightricity is seeking to apply its unique highly efficient indoor photovoltaic (PV) technology to powering security features on the next generation of smart cards. There is a current focus in the powered smart card industry on introducing biometric cards which include fingerprint sensors. These contactless cards are typically powered by harvesting RF energy from the card reader device when in very close proximity for a few seconds. This helps to address secure transaction at point of sale thus reducing fraudulent usage. However, in most major markets more than 75% of fraudulent transactions are of the 'card-not-present' variety e.g. internet and telephone purchases, so a card reader is not available to power the card and its security features. Lightricity will investigate the compatibility of its technology with the demanding standardised specifications of smart cards, the smart card use-case scenarios and the challenges of the established manufacturing processes. The project will also evaluate the practical benefits PV energy harvesting can bring for both the issuer and the customer. It is believed that there is significant potential to power both fingerprint sensors and miniature dynamically updatable displays for CVV numbers thus bringing the enhanced security features to the main fraud challenges too. Where battery solutions have proven unacceptable and other PV solutions insufficiently efficient or compatible with card manufacturing it is believed that Lightricity's PV technology has strong potential. It has already been demonstrated to be up to 6x more efficient indoors than other more commonly used PV technologies enabling more power-hungry applications with much smaller PV modules of the order of a few mm2\. It is also very thin with potential for further reduction and is able to withstand high temperatures typical of hot lamination manufacturing processes. The powered smart card industry is highly concentrated and organised in a series of partnerships. Development and adoption of new technical innovations is concentrated in a relatively small number of these companies. In order to understand, in detail, the specific technical and commercial challenges and potential solutions and to gain acceptance as a development partner Lightricity will, through this project, engage with the key European R&D Centres that are leading next generation smart card developments. These are predominantly found in France and Germany.

The economic and social impact of Covid-19 is evident in the constraints placed on businesses, schools and various public and private indoor spaces with regards to occupancy and ensuring safe return-to-work strategies. Exhaled CO2 affects human health at levels as low as 1,000 ppm, commonly observed in crowded, poorly ventilated rooms. Many countries have or are setting maximum Permissible Exposure Limits. Covid-19 mitigation strategies also cite improved ventilation, regularly exchanging indoor air with fresh outdoor air, as key to reducing indoor airborne virus transmission. Whilst the sophisticated ventilation systems can automatically manage IAQ, there is a clear opportunity to develop affordable technical solutions based on CO2 monitoring that support improvements to ventilation for the widest possible range of users. There is also clear Covid-19 economic impact mitigation in reducing the operating costs e.g. energy usage and system maintenance, by introducing more efficient ventilation control options that are retrofittable and have lower cost of installation and ownership than competing options. This project develops an autonomous prototype wirelessly communicating self-powered CO2 sensor device beyond current state-of-the-art to enable effective ventilation control. Combining GSS's new ultra-low power NDIR CO2 sensor, LoRa wireless communication and Lightricity world-leading indoor PV along with further sensors (Temperature/Humidity/Pressure/Light -- for further IAQ information and device management) in a miniaturised package would deliver the world's first truly self-powered long-range wireless CO2 sensor nodes for ventilation control and occupancy determination. With only one gateway per building and long wireless range (km), LoRa Wide Area Network saves the deployment cost of multiple gateways per building compared with SoA short-range wireless approaches (Wifi, BLE, EnOcean) enabling much easier installation, maintenance and better affordability to different types of users e.g. individuals, housing associations, residential care homes. It enables economic fit-and-forget retrofitting/upgrading of control or adjustment notification to facilities managers and allows care home and residential users to be notified for simple, practical actions like opening windows when air quality indicates insufficient ventilation. The project builds upon previous feasibility work powering a short-range CO2 wireless sensor using Lightricity PV and significantly extends functionality and capability beyond the state-of-the-art in wireless CO2 sensors. The solution is sustainable through better ventilation control reducing wasted energy and using a renewable energy source (PV) to avoid environmental impact of battery waste. It is also inclusive in bringing ventilation control options and therefore health to the widest possible range of users.

This project involves understanding the feasibility of a self-powered network of sensing and communicating beacons/trackers that enables the location and status monitoring of assets in a hospital thus reducing lost time of healthcare professionals and enabling life-saving equipment to be easily located and usage to be optimally managed. It seeks to apply Lightricity's proven and world leading commercially available low-light indoor photovoltaic (PV) technology to wireless trackers/beacons that can be deployed in other vendor's networked systems thus providing a much-improved and scalable service to customers such as hospitals. It addresses practicality and user experience by making tracker instalment a fit-and-forget operation. It reduces costs associated with maintenance e.g. battery change. It helps healthcare system operate more efficiently locating critical equipment and monitoring status/condition of tracked items thus saving money and lives, relieving the current pressures and helping prepare for future periods of high demand. It is sustainable in the sense that it reduces workloads in overstretched public health systems and addresses power challenges with a renewable energy source thus avoiding the environmental issue of disposal of billions of batteries.

The consortium comprising Lightricity (Lead partner), ICS, IQE and Microsemi aims to produce ultra-efficient and cost effective III-V on Silicon energy harvesting devices that can be tailored for cost sensitive miniaturised IoT applications. Utilising technology developed through many years of innovation, Lightricity's technology already delivers world leading efficiency (\>30% efficiency) in low light level indoor environments. Design and transfer of that technology onto large Silicon substrates (up to 12 inch) will leverage existing Silicon-based mass production facilities. IQE has many years of epitaxial experience growing Ge on Si templates for III-V overgrowth. Combined with innovative wafer-level processing techniques developed at ICS and embedded die packaging technology at Microsemi, this project will drastically reduce the manufacturing costs and enable rapid scale-up of Lightricity technology into cost sensitive and size-constrained applications (asset tracking, industrial IoT), or more power-hungry applications (e.g. gas sensors, imaging devices). The key deliverable is a low cost miniaturised III-V on silicon energy harvesting device that will provide renewable power to two proof of concept demonstrators covering two main IoT segments: industrial and retail. The partners will demonstrate applicability of the newly developed low-cost Energy Harvesting component on a self-powered wireless Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) tracker and Electronic Shelf Labels prototypes. Route to market and future exploitation of the technology within the retail industry will be supported by unpaid end-user Ahead-of-the-Curve, a spin-out from Unilever. Wireless connectivity will be supported by device manufacturer Dialog Semiconductor (unpaid partner), providing ultra-low power and small footprint wireless BLE chipsets. Beyond the energy harvesting field, this project will also open up new opportunities for deployment of reliable and high performance III-V devices into low cost sensors and consumer electronics.

As evidenced in the Covid-19 pandemic, it is crucial that nurses and doctors' time is productively spent on patient care rather than wasted on finding missing equipment such as pumps, ventilators, beds, wheelchairs, blood pressure and ECG monitors. Studies have shown that medical staff can spend up to two hours-per-work shift searching for equipment. Multiple industry sources estimate that between 10% and 20% of hospital inventory is stolen or lost each year. Current solutions for tracking of assets in hospitals are based on battery-operated RFID or Bluetooth technologies. Such Real-Time Location System (RTLS) can show equipment location data. However, they suffer a large total Cost-of-Ownership (due to limited device lifetime and significant maintenance required), a lack of device interoperability and modularity (no possibility to easily upgrade the system). There is thus still reluctance within healthcare to deploy asset tracking solutions, despite the potential to save both money and lives. Installation expenses can indeed be high if the solution is not compatible with the hospital's already-existing network infrastructure and regulations. Operational costs will be also prohibitive if medical staff have to replace batteries in thousands of IoT devices. In this project, Lightricity (Oxford-based SME, spun-out from SHARP Labs) will focus on reducing overall cost-of-ownership by developing a completely autonomous (self-powered with indoor Photovoltaic cells) and modular wireless hardware solution for asset tracking and monitoring. Lightricity will demonstrate a standards-based systems which can support interoperability features with existing IoT cloud software and network infrastructures. The objectives of this project will be focussed on the development of 2 key demonstrators: * A prototype of self-powered indoor asset tracking device with general purpose real-time tracking capability. * An advanced self-powered indoor wireless monitoring device for detection of asset movements and monitoring of sensitive equipment. In the future, the developed technology will also find applicability in patient monitoring and tracing for the fight of spreading infections in hospitals and care-homes, transportation, and supply-chain management (logistics and retail).

Smart wearables are becoming increasingly pervasive, driven by sustained advances in miniaturisation of electronics, improvements in sensors and connectivity, and growing capability to embed electronics in a variety of products. The market has seen steady growth in recent years, and this is projected to continue. KYMIRA believes the next generation of wearables will heavily include garments in which the electronics are embedded within the fabric textiles themselves. As such, this is what KYMIRA focuses R&D on and is in line to produce products for roll-out in the coming 3-5 years.These electronics embedded wearables will look to be powered by small, flexible batteries, if any. This is where energy harvesting (EH) mechanisms will prove valuable and by embedding these technologies within textile fabrics, truly self-sufficient viable products can be developed. Several EH techniques have been investigated for wearables, and PV cells have consistently been demonstrated as being highly efficient in their capabilities to provide power. Lightricity have developed industry leading PV cells capable of harvesting energy from outdoor as well as indoor light sources with very high efficiency, demonstrating their wide applicability.This project combines the electronic(e)-textile technology of KYMIRA, superior EH technology from Lightricity and flexible power storage solutions of Cambridge Display Technologies to develop a flexible, durable and comfortable e-textile solution capable of powering future wearable technologies.

CubeSats are small, standardised satellites consisting of one or multiple 10x10x10cm3 units, with ~1kg per unit. They play an increasingly important role in commercial spaceflight and are being considered for more and more commercial and scientific space missions, due to the low-cost and low-risk approach. The size and mass constraints of CubeSats generally put a limitation on the available area for solar arrays and therefore power generation capability. This in effect limits the types of applications that can be flown on CubeSats. A number of commercial applications require very high power for enabling new generations of payloads (Earth Observation or space-based Telecommunications) or for operational reasons (for pointing-towards-Earth sensors or cooling-from-Sun-heat devices). These missions currently have to fly on much larger satellites that can provide the needed power. A significant increase of power available to CubeSats will be a game-changer by enabling a whole new range of missions to fit into the CubeSat format, drastically reducing the risk and cost associated with these missions. This project aims to establish a design for a high power solar panel system which can be integrated onto the standardised CubeSat platforms. The project aims to build an engineering model of a solar panel and perform integrated testing with a CubeSat. The high power solar panel system will feature innovative solutions to increase the power generated by the panel, while maintaining the mass and size restrictions. Novel solar panels and mechanisms will be combined into one system to deliver a more than 60% increase in power generated on CubeSats compared to the current state-of-the-art.

This project will address the needs of the fast growing Internet of Things (IoT) market by developing a manufacturing process to create the world's smallest and highest efficiency light energy harvesting (photovoltaic) module (mm^2 range) for smart dust sensors and motes. Smart dust sensors will require a mass-producible, low cost, highly efficient, ultra-small footprint and free shape power source that can operate in indoor and outdoor environments. Moreover, due to the large number of devices to be deployed in the field, a renewable power source will be essential to provide complete autonomy to these smart dust sensors. The power source should also provide sufficiently high voltage and power density to be combined with a rechargeable storage element (e.g. solid-state battery) and to supply energy to a smart dust sensor's low-power MCU (e.g. state-of-the-art sub-threshold ARM CPU implementations) and/or RF chipset. This project will build on Lightricity's Photovoltaic Energy Harvesting technology which has already exhibited superior low light level performance at the cm^2 level.

This project will address the needs of the fast growing Internet of Things (IoT) market by developing materials for challenging environments and a manufacturing process to create the world’s first fully integrated thin film power source. The market needs robust, low maintenance sensor nodes for demanding environments. The power source is a major challenge: it must be robust, work at 100 °C and be maintenance-free. The footprint must be small with high aesthetics for easy integration into the sensor and its operating environment. It should have dimensions comparable to the sensor and other electronics elements but deliver power to fully operate the sensor. This project will build upon Ilika’s thin film solid state battery technology and Sharps light energy harvesting technology, with significant performance improvements expected when combining the two technologies to produce the fully integrated system. We will initially address motorsport/automotive and asset tracking applications but given the strong cross sector applicability of the technology, we anticipate being able to meet the needs of the growing healthcare, transport and industrial markets.