0278-0046 (c) 2018 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information. This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TIE.2018.2863190, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS 1 Design of Intelligent Thermoelectric Energy Harvesting for IoT based and Wireless Sensor Network Application (May 2017) Gourav Verma and Vidushi Sharma Abstract—Energy harvesting using thermoelectric generator has been a challenging task. Thermoelectric energy generator modules for energy harvesting in low power application or Wire- less Sensor Network (WSN) node has been modeled, designed, fabricated and analyzed. These modules can be used in number of application for energy generation such as WSN for environ- mental monitoring, low power IoT based applications, etc. where temperature gradient exist such as desserts, equatorial forests areas etc. to industrial application like engines, hot air pipes, chimneys etc. Researchers have proposed such modules for static thermal conditions. We have proposed a novel thermoelectric energy harvesting system which is intelligent and is for dynamic thermal conditions. The module proposed is cost effective and has simplified structure. The system is able to create a maximum of 23oC temperature difference and hence able to harvest 0.45W of maximum output power. For this only 60g of water is required for achieving temperature gradient. Index Terms—Energy Harvesting, TEG, TEH, Thermoelectric energy harvesting, Thermal Energy, Wireless Sensor Network, Energy Harvesting for WSN I. I NTRODUCTION W IRELESS Energy harvesting using thermoelectric gen- erator has been a challenging task. Thermoelectric energy generator modules for energy harvesting in low power application or Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) node has been modeled, designed, fabricated and analyzed. These modules can be used in number of application for energy generation such as WSN for environmental monitoring, low power IoT based applications, etc. where temperature gradient exist such as desserts, equatorial forests areas etc. to industrial appli- cation like engines, hot air pipes, chimneys etc. Researchers have proposed such modules for static thermal conditions. We have proposed a novel thermoelectric energy harvesting system which is intelligent and is for dynamic thermal conditions. The module proposed is cost effective and has simplified structure. The system is able to create a maximum of 23oC temperature difference and hence able to harvest 0.45W of maximum output power. For this only 60g of water is required for achieving temperature gradient. Gourav Verma is with the Electronics and Communication Departe- ment, Northern India Engineering College,New Delhi, India, and also re- search scholar at School of ICT, GBU, Greater Noida, India e-mail: (gau- rav.gspindia@gmail.com). Vidushi Sharma is at School of ICT, GBU, Greater Noida, India. Manuscript received April 19, 2005; revised August 26, 2015. Thermal energy is strictly based on the temperature differ- ence. If there is temperature difference than output electrical power can be achieved. Not only this, there are many applica- tions like hot water pipes, boilers, heaters, etc. where the hot temperature is available Temperature gradient applied to any Thermoelectric Generator (TEG) provides electrical energy [1].Various systems have been designed for the thermoelectric generator. An autonomous power unit has been created using the TEG in [2] [3] [4]. Although the challenges for TEG energy are small power (0.9mW or less), very low voltage (0.6V) and large system size (due to a large number of thermo couples) yet thermoelectric energy harvesting techniques are growing rapidly. The researchers are working on the nanotech- nology and MEMS fabrication for thermoelectric generators as a system [6] [7] [8]. However, less work has been done at the system level, where energy generation and its maintenance are reported [5]. An efficient framework for thermoelectric energy harvesting is required to be developed. In this paper, first the design issues for a thermoelectric energy harvesting system have been investigated. The impor- tant parameters needed to convert the temperature difference into electrical energy have been analyzed deeply. The analysis has been done in which TEGs with a different configuration of Bismuth (Bi) and Antimony (Sn) has been investigated using simulation. Different parameters like alpha (α), Rho (ρ), Figure of merit (ZT ), and conversion efficiency is analyzed. A framework for thermoelectric energy harvesting has been proposed which can be directly used with WSN node. The framework is designed for maximum heat transfer from the TEH system which provides max output power. The maximum heat transfer system results maximum temperature difference between hot and cold side of TEG. The proposed framework of thermoelectric energy harvesting device will be able to produce and manage energy to provide maximum efficiency. The proposed design is different from conventional design in terms of method used at cold side. Aluminum (Al) heat sink [2][3] and PCM [4] [5] has been used in conventional designs which after some time of heat transfer have nearly equal temperature (at both hot and cold sides) and the TEH is not able to provide sufficient output power. The paper is structured as follows. In section II, there is related work in the area of thermoelectric energy harvesting. Section III, describes the proposed framework for the thermo- electric energy harvesting. Section IV has the mathematical