Pulse mode of operation - A new booster of TEG, improving power up to X2.7-to better fit IoT requirements

摘要

Internet of Things (IoT) is becoming the new driver for semiconductor industry and the largest electronic market ever seen. The number of IoT nodes is already many times larger than the human population and is continuously growing. It is thus mandatory that IoT nodes become self-supplying with energy harvested from environment since periodic exchange of batteries in such a huge number of units (often located in inaccessible places e.g. industrial environment or elements of constructions) is impractical and soon will be simply impossible. Photovoltaic generators may easily harvest energy where light is available, but the IoT nodes often work in dark, hidden locations where the only available energy sources are heat losses. There, ThermoElectric Generators (TEGs) could be the best candidate, if not that if we speak of exploiting heat losses it often means very low temperature differences. This means conditions where TEGs power production drops down dramatically. In this paper we put forward a new idea of TEG's pulse operation that boosts the power production up to X2.7. This extends the domain of applicability of TEGs to lower temperature differences, where conventional TEGs are out of the game. Next, we show that the improvement X2.7 maintains also at larger temperature differences that presents obvious advantages.