This paper reports the design of a self-powered telemetric wireless sensor node for temperature measurement. The device is realized with a conventional off-the-shelf thermoelectric generator as a power source. It is sandwiched between two aluminum core printed circuit boards (PCBs). One board is exposed to the heat source and has the role of a heat collector, whereas another one with the mounted low profile heatsink acts as a heat spreader. Electronic components of the node are placed on the inner surfaces of the boards. Implemented step-up circuitry is accommodated to achieve stabile cold boot of the node at a low temperature difference between its hot side and ambient (less than 15 °C), even when it is in thermally inefficient position. Operational autonomy of the node in the absence of the heat source is extended by 30% comparing with the common step-up circuitry implementation. The aluminum core PCBs provide node simplicity and compactness, with small overall dimensions.

This paper reports the design of a photovoltaic energy harvesting device used as a telemetry node in wireless sensor networks. The device draws power from the small solar cell, stores it into the primary energy buffer and backup supercapacitor, collects measured data from various sensors and transmits them over low power radio link at 868 MHz. Its design ensures reliable cold booting under very poor illumination conditions (down to 20 $\mathrm{lx}$). The solar cell also enables indirect illumination level detection for the subcircuit that manages stored energy (day/night detector). The device is allowed to draw power from the backup supercapacitor only when it is not possible to gather enough energy from the solar cell during the sleep period. Short lasting and sudden drops of the illumination do not activate the backup power supply. A wireless sensor node design is adjusted to the proposed photovoltaic harvesting circuitry, so the overall power consumption in the sleep mode is less than 25 μW. Also, due to adaptive power consumption, proposed device topology ensures its autonomy time in the total darkness of 81 h$\mathrm{}$. The device has been produced using commercially available components enabling versatile telemetric functionality by the implementation of different sensors.