2 research outputs found
Analysis of Thermoelectric Coolers as Energy Harvesters for Low Power Embedded Applications
The growing popularity of solid state thermoelectric
devices in cooling applications has sparked an increasing diversity of
thermoelectric coolers (TECs) on the market, commonly known as
“Peltier modules”. They can also be used as generators, converting
a temperature difference into electric power, and opportunities are
plentiful to make use of these devices as thermoelectric generators
(TEGs) to supply energy to low power, autonomous embedded
electronic applications. Their adoption as energy harvesters in this
new domain of usage is obstructed by the complex thermoelectric
models commonly associated with TEGs. Low cost TECs for the
consumer market lack the required parameters to use the models
because they are not intended for this mode of operation, thereby
urging an alternative method to obtain electric power estimations
in specific operating conditions. The design of the test setup
implemented in this paper is specifically targeted at benchmarking
commercial, off-the-shelf TECs for use as energy harvesters in
domestic environments: applications with limited temperature
differences and space available. The usefulness is demonstrated by
testing and comparing single and multi stage TECs with different
sizes. The effect of a boost converter stage on the thermoelectric
end-to-end efficiency is also discussed
An Ultrasonic Multiple-Access Ranging Core Based on Frequency Shift Keying Towards Indoor Localization
This paper describes a new approach and implementation methodology for indoor ranging based on the time difference of arrival using code division multiple access with ultrasound signals. A novel implementation based on a field programmable gate array using finite impulse response filters and an optimized correlation demodulator implementation for ultrasound orthogonal signals is developed. Orthogonal codes are modulated onto ultrasound signals using frequency shift keying with carrier frequencies of 24.5 kHz and 26 kHz. This implementation enhances the possibilities for real-time, embedded and low-power tracking of several simultaneous transmitters. Due to the high degree of parallelism offered by field programmable gate arrays, up to four transmitters can be tracked simultaneously. The implementation requires at most 30% of the available logic gates of a Spartan-6 XC6SLX45 device and is evaluated on accuracy and precision through several ranging topologies. In the first topology, the distance between one transmitter and one receiver is evaluated. Afterwards, ranging analyses are applied between two simultaneous transmitters and one receiver. Ultimately, the position of the receiver against four transmitters using trilateration is also demonstrated. Results show enhanced distance measurements with distances ranging from a few centimeters up to 17 m, while keeping a centimeter-level accuracy