A thermoelectric energy harvester powered wireless sensor networks (WSNs) module designed for building energy management (BEM) applications is built and tested in this work. An analytic thermoelectric generator (TEG) electrical model is built and verified based on parameters given in manufacturer data sheets of Bismuth Telluride TEGs. A charge pump/switching regulator two-stage ultra-low voltage step-up DC/DC converter design is presented in this work to boost the <0.5 V output voltage of TEG to usable voltage level for WSN (3.3 V). The design concept, device simulation, circuits schematic, and the measurement results are presented in detail. The prototype device test results show 25% end-to-end conversion efficiency in a wide range of input temperatures/voltages. Further tests demonstrate that the proposed thermoelectric generator design can effectively power WSN module which operates with a 1.7% duty cycle (5.8 seconds measurement time interval) when the prototype is placed on a typical wall-mount heater (60 ∘ C surface temperature). The thermoelectric energy harvesting powered WSN demonstrates duty cycles significantly higher than the required duty cycle for BEM WSN applications.

Wireless sensor networks are collections of autonomous devices with computational, sensing and wireless communication capabilities. Research in these networks has been growing steadily in the past few years given the wide range of applications that can benefit from such a technology. In this paper, the development of a highly modular and miniaturized wireless platform for sensor networks is described. The system incorporates a radio transceiver (operating in the 2.4 GHz ISM Band) with embedded protocol software to minimize power consumption and maximize data throughput. Additional input capability for sensor and actuator integration can be incorporated seamlessly due to the modular nature of the system. The total system is packaged in a modular 25mm cubed form factor.

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