title: Self-Powered WSN for Distributed Data Center Monitoring.
abstract: Monitoring environmental parameters in data centers is gathering nowadays increasing attention from industry, due to the need of high energy efficiency of cloud services. We present the design and the characterization of an energy neutral embedded wireless system, prototyped to monitor perpetually environmental parameters in servers and racks. It is powered by an energy harvesting module based on Thermoelectric Generators, which converts the heat dissipation from the servers. Starting from the empirical characterization of the energy harvester, we present a power conditioning circuit optimized for the specific application. The whole system has been enhanced with several sensors. An ultra-low-power micro-controller stacked over the energy harvesting provides an efficient power management. Performance have been assessed and compared with the analytical model for validation.
authors.affiliation: Department of Industrial Engineering (DII), University of Trento, via Sommarive 9, Povo (TN) I-38123, Italy. davide.brunelli@unitn.it.
authors.forename: Davide
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Brunelli
authors.affiliation: Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science (DISI), University of Trento, via Sommarive 9, Povo (TN) I-38123, Italy. roberto.passerone@unitn.it.
authors.forename: Roberto
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Passerone
authors.affiliation: Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science (DISI), University of Trento, via Sommarive 9, Povo (TN) I-38123, Italy. luca.rizzon@unitn.it.
authors.forename: Luca
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Rizzon
authors.affiliation: Department of Industrial Engineering (DII), University of Trento, via Sommarive 9, Povo (TN) I-38123, Italy. maurizio.rossi@unitn.it.
authors.forename: Maurizio
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Rossi
authors.affiliation: Department of Industrial Engineering (DII), University of Trento, via Sommarive 9, Povo (TN) I-38123, Italy. davide.sartori.1@unitn.it.
authors.forename: Davide
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Sartori
keywords: TEGs; batteryless WSN; energy harvesting