Abstract
Energy harvesting (EH) technique has been proposed as a favorable solution for addressing the power supply exhaustion in a wireless sensor node and prolong the operating time for a wireless sensor network. Thermoelectric energy generator (TEG) is a valuable device converting the waste heat into electricity which can be collected and stored for electronics. In this paper, the thermal energy from human body is captured and converted to the low electrical energy by means of thermoelectric energy harvester. The aim of presented work is utilizing the converted electricity to power the related electronic device and to extend the working life of a sensor node. Considering the related characteristics of TEG used for human, a type of a novel power management system is designed and presented to harvest generated electricity. The proposed circuit is developed based on off-the-shelf commercial chips, LTC3108 and BQ25504. It can accept the lowest input voltage of 20 mV, which is more suitable for human thermoelectric energy harvesting. Through experiments, developed energy harvesting system can effectively power the sensor to intermittently transmit the data as well as perform the converted energy storage. Compared to the independent commercial chips applications and other microcontroller-based energy harvesting systems, the designed thermoelectric energy harvester system presents the advantages not only in high energy storage utilization rate but also the ultra-low input voltage characteristic. Since the heat from human body is harvested, therefore, the system can possibly be used to power the sensor placed on human body and has practical applications such as physiological parameter monitoring.
Highlights
As the rapid development of information based technique, the wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have been widely used to monitor multiple types of objects [1,2,3,4]
This is due to the feature of utilized commercial power management chip as well as the reason of low conversion efficiency for energy harvesting system based on LTC3108
This paper presents a type of human body-based thermal energy harvesting system aimed to power the related wearable sensor applied to human
Summary
As the rapid development of information based technique, the wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have been widely used to monitor multiple types of objects [1,2,3,4]. The biggest drawback of this system is the lack of Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) function, which leads to the lower efficiency of system and most thermal energy is wasted This is due to the feature of utilized commercial power management chip as well as the reason of low conversion efficiency for energy harvesting system based on LTC3108. Thielen et al [18] divided the existed TEG module into two classes, i.e., the μTEG and mTEG These two types of TEGs with widely used off-the-shelf power management chips are used to establish different energy harvesting systems applied to human body to drive the wearable devices. In order to develop a human body-based energy harvesting system to drive the related electronics, the stage of focus should be reducing the size and self-power consumption of power management circuit and increasing the conversion efficiency of energy harvesting system.
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