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'EnOcean' GmbH is a spin-off company of Siemens AG founded in 2001, that is venture funded. It is a German company headquartered in Oberhaching, near Munich, which currently employs 25 staff. It is a technology supplier of self-powered modules (transmitters, receivers, transceivers, energy converter) to companies (e.g. Siemens, Zumtobel, Omnio, Osram, Wieland Electric, Peha, Thermokon, Wago, Herga), which develop and manufacture products used in building automation (light, shading, hvac), industrial automation, and automotive industry (replacement of the conventional battery in tyre pressure sensors).
The company has won awards for the technology and company performance, e.g. the Bavarian Innovation Prize 2002^[1] for its globally unique technology and the award "Technology Pioneer 2006"^[2] by the renowned World Economic Forum.

Contents

Technology

References/ Sources

External links

Technology

The company has developed a technology that is based on the efficient exploitation of slightest changes in the environmental energy using the principles of energy harvesting. In order to transform such energy fluctuations into usable electrical energy, electromagnetic, piezogenerators, solar cells, thermocouples, and other energy converters are used. The company’s products (such as sensors and radio switches) are battery-less and were engineered to operate maintenance-free. The signals of these sensors and switches can be transmitted across a distance up to 300 meters. Early switches from the company used piezo generators, but these have been replaced with electromagnetic energy sources to reduce the operating pressure (7 Newtons), and increase the service life to 50,000 operations.
The most pervasive example of a product stemming from the proprietary RF protocol is the battery-free wireless light switch. This product has gone to market under the pretense that it requires less time and wire to install because no wire is required between the switch and the light fixture. They also avoid the need to run switched circuits as the actual power switching is performed locally at the load itself.
Packets of data are transmitted at 120 kbit/s with the packet being 14 bytes long with a four byte data payload. RF energy is only transmitted for the 1's on the data, so inherently reducing the amount of power required. Three packets are sent at pseudo-random intervals reducing the possibility of packet collisions to a very low figure. Push switches also transmit a further three data packets on release of the switch push-button, so allowing other features such as light dimming to be performed.^[3]
This technology also enables a wireless community of battery-less sensors to connect to just a few transceivers that need to be powered for continuous operation. Therefore it can be used for wireless mesh networking (nonstandard mesh protocol).
All switch signals or the information gathered by the sensors are transmitted with utmost reliability – unwanted interference with other signals can be completely excluded. Every device has a unique 32-bit serial number, so local interference is avoided by 'training in' receivers to the transmitters required to operate them. The frequency used for the majority of the devices is 868.3 MHz.
One interesting application demonstrated is an audience voting system, developed by EnOcean's UK distributor. Each member of the audience is given a four-button remote with an EnOcean transmitter, and the signals are decoded by a receiver connected to a PC. This avoids the need to manage batteries in many remote handsets, and each handset is uniquely identified, so the 'quizmaster' or presenter can see each individual answer from each member of the audience.
The standard switch modules produced by the company employ electro-magnetic generation techniques.
EnOcean technologies also appear in other products such as 'Navatis' from Herga.
In July 2007, the company announced technology to allow transmitters to be powered from Peltier devices with a minimum of 2 degrees Celsius temperature difference on each side of a 15 mm square Peltier panel.

References/ Sources

1. ''Bavarian Innovation Prize 2002'' for EnOcean
2. ''Technology Pioneer in Energy 2006'' by the World Economic Forum
3. ''Energy for free'' in the ''Components in Electronics'' magazine, April 2007

External links

★ EnOcean website

★ Description of voting system