2014 Seventh International Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Design
Wireless Thermometer Based on Bluetooth 4.0 Low-energy
Hongjie Li, Jian Luo
Electronic Science and Technology Research Institute
University of Electronic Science and Technology of China
Chengdu, China
e-mail: 2772765240@qq.com, 280188523@qq.com
Abstract—Based on the analysis of the infrared thermometry
principle, using low power Bluetooth4.0 technology and
combining software and hardware, a thermometer was
designed, which can send temperature data to the mobile
phone by Bluetooth4.0. After amplified the infrared
temperature sensor signal of the thermometer by a
instrumentation amplifier, CC2540 carries on the AD
sampling, based on the infrared thermometry principle, to
calculate the temperature value. Finally the temperature value
will be sent to the mobile phone through the Bluetooth 4.0, and
the temperature value can be plotted as a line so that we can
clearly observe patient’s temperature changes for a long time.
Through the actual test, the feasibility of the system was
verified.
Keywords-thermometer;bluetooth4.0 BLE;CC2540;infrared
temperature sensor; sensor signal processing
I. INTRODUCTION
Infrared thermometer has the characteristics of rapid
measurement, non-contact, and non-destructive, which was
widely used in the “SARS” epidemic period. The
thermometer mostly only has a handheld terminal including
a detection part and a display part. The detection part detects
the temperature and the display part displays the results.
While there are several problems: (1) handheld terminal
cannot display multiple temperature value, so Changes of
patient’s temperature cannot be observed for a long time
except a high resolution displayer, whose the volume and
cost are difficult to be accepted, was used. If the temperature
data is sent to display on a mobile phone, Changes of
patient’s temperature can be observed without the cost and
volume increasing much; (2) the data transmission has a
problem between the handheld terminal and mobile phone. If
the handheld terminal is connected with a mobile phone
through the wired way, a long signal line must be needed.
This long signal line not only is very troublesome in practice,
but also limits the transmission distance. If the handheld
terminal is connected with a mobile phone through wireless,
the cable will be removed and the transmission distance will
be extended, but it needs to design RF circuit that usually
costs much power.
Based on low power Bluetooth4.0 technology, an
infrared thermometer was designed. The infrared
thermometer sends temperature data to a mobile phone by
Bluetooth4.0. Its data transmission is stable and reliable and
it has farther transmission distance and lower power
978-1-4799-7005-6/14 $31.00 © 2014 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/ISCID.2014.46
consumption. In addition, Changes of patient’s temperature
can be watched for a long time through the mobile phone
APP.
II. INFRARED THERMOMETRY PRINCIPLE
All objects above absolute zero are emitting infrared
radiation energy to the surrounding space constantly[1]. There
is a close relationship between the infrared radiant energy
intensity of the object and its surface temperature. So the
surface temperature can be accurately measured by
measuring the object’s infrared radiant energy[2]. This is the
theoretical basis of the infrared thermometry.
A. Blackbody Radiation Law
The blackbody is a kind of ideal radiator, which absorbs
all wavelengths radiant energy. However, all actual objects
are not blackbody[3]. Besides the wavelength and the object
temperature, an actual objects’ radiant energy intensity is
influenced by the object’s material, preparation methods,
surface state, thermal process and environmental factors. So
we introduced a coefficient related to the material and the
surface state, the emissivity. And the emissivity of blackbody
is 1. The coefficient value is between 0 and 1, which shows
the proximity of the thermal radiation between actual object
and blackbody. The main factors affecting emissivity are
material type and thickness, surface roughness, physical and
chemical structure[4].
Blackbody radiation law, also known as Planck's law,
gives the relationship between the blackbody spectral
radiation energy per unit area per unit time in the
hemispherical direction and the absolute temperature and
wavelength[5].
C1λ −5
M b (λ ,T)= (1)
exp[(C2 / λT ) − 1]
In the formula, M b (λ ,T) is the blackbody radiation
intensity. λ is the wavelength. C1 =2π c2 h , C2=hc/K are the
first radiation constant and second radiation constant.
h=6.6262 ×10-34 (j⋅ s) is the Planck constant,
K =1.3806 ×10-23 (W ⋅ s ⋅ K -1 ) is the Boltzmann constant.
According to this formula, the relation curve between
blackbody emission intensity and wavelength is shown as in
Figure 1.
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 9
x 10 The main wavelength of people’s radiation is at
2.5~15μ m , the radiation energy of 8~14 μ m band
the blackbody radiation intensityM (λ,T)/(W⋅m ) 8
T=900K
-3

7
account for 46% . So people’s surface temperature can be
6
accurately measured by measuring people’s infrared
radiant energy.
5
III. HARDWARE DESIGN
T=800K
4
A. Architecture of The Whole System
3
Temperature measurement system is mainly composed of
T=700K four parts: a power supply module, a signal acquisition
2
module (including an optical system, a signal acquisition
1 T=600K circuit), a handheld terminal display and control module
T=500K
(including Bluetooth MCU, LCD, keys), mobile phone
0 (APP), as shown in Figure 2.
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16
wavelengthλ/μm

Figure 1. The blackbody radiation intensity.

What we can see from the graph are:

1) with the increasing of temperature, the blackbody
radiation intensity will become stronger;
2) with the increasing of temperature, the wavelength of
radiant peak is shorter;
3) with the temperature variation, shorter wave has a
faster radiation changes rate. Figure 2. ARCHITECTURE OF THE WHOLE SYSTEM.

B. Stefan-Boltzmann Law The power supply module main function is control the
Stefan-Boltzmann law[6]: The total energy M b (T) power supply of signal acquisition module and handheld
radiated by a blackbody surface per unit area per unit time is terminal display and control module. So the system has three
four power of blackbody itself thermodynamic temperature states. One is the standby state. This state is extremely low
power consumption. In this state MCU is set in low power
T,
mode, and the other circuit is closed. Another is the normal
state 1, and in the state each circuit is in normal working
M b (T)=σ T 4 (2) state. The third state of the system is the normal state 2.
What is the difference between the state 2 and the state 1 is
σ is the Stefan-Boltzmann constant. The graybody’s that in the state 2 the system Bluetooth has connected to the
emissivity is in 0~1.Under the same condition, the ratio of mobile phone. Transitions between the states of the system is
the graybody surface radiation energy and the blackbody shown in Figure 3.
surface in unit time at the same wavelength is ε ,

M b (T)
ε= (3)
M (T)

M (T) is the greybody surface radiation energy in unit

time at the same wavelength.
By formula (2) and (3), the greybody surface total
radiation energy in unit time at the same wavelength can be
inferred,

M (T) = εσ T 4 (4)

Formula (4) is the theoretical basis of graybody surface

temperature in the infrared wave band. 
Figure 3. Transitions between the states of the system.

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 The signal acquisition module comprises an optical The amplification circuit Shown in Fig. 4 consisted of a
system, The signal acquisition circuit. The infrared radiation piece of AD623 and a piece of LM358. AD623 is an
of human body focus on the infrared sensor through the adjustable high precision instrumentation amplifier. Its gain
optical system, then The infrared radiation will be converted range is 1~1000. Its role is the temperature sensor output
into heat at first. In the end, The infrared radiation will be signal amplification. LM358 includes two independent, high
converted into voltage. The signal acquisition circuit is gain, internally frequency compensation operational
responsible for filtering and amplifying the output voltage. amplifier. Its role is to form a voltage follower tracking
The handheld terminal display and control module TS118-3 thermistor’s voltage changes.
includes MCU, LCD and keys. MCU is responsible for AD R22
acquisition of the output voltage of The signal acquisition A1
circuit. Through the calculation the AD data will be 1 -RG AD623+RG 8 VCC2_+3.3V
converted into temperature data and it will be saved. If the C27 C28 C29 2 -IN +VS 7
3 +IN OUTPUT 6
bluetooth is connected, the temperature data in storage will 4 -VS REF 5
P0.0
C30C31
be sent to the mobile phone via Bluetooth. LCD is
responsible for the display of real-time measurements and AGND AGND
AGND AGND
some state information of the handheld terminal.
Mobile phone APP can send some control commands to R25 VCC2_+3.3V AGND
R26
the handheld terminal. At the same time, we can observe the
P0.7
Changes of patient’s temperature for a long time through the R28 VCC2_+3.3V
mobile phone APP. T1 A2
LM358
C34
3 3TS118-3
1 1 1 OUT1 VCC+
8 AGND
B. Overview of CC2540 Chip 2 IN-1 OUT2 7
4 4 2 2 3 IN+1 IN-2 6
The CC2540 is a cost-effective, low-power, true system- 4 GND IN+2 5
on-chip (SoC) for Bluetooth low energy applications. It
enables robust BLE master or slave nodes to be built with AGND AGND
very low total bill-of-material costs. The CC2540 combines Figure 4. Signal acquisition circuit.
an excellent RF transceiver with an industry-standard
enhanced 8051 MCU, in-system programmable flash
memory, 8-KB RAM, and many other powerful supporting IV. SOFTWARE DESIGN
features and peripherals. The CC2540 is suitable for systems
where very low power consumption is required. Very low- A. System Parameter Setting
power sleep modes are available. Short transition times AD signal acquisition resolution has an important effect
between operating modes further enable low power on the measurement precision. The higher resolution of AD
consumption[7]. signal acquisition, the smaller the value of the voltage can be
C. Signal Acquisition Circuit identified and the lower sampling frequency. CC2540 has a 8
channel ADC. Its resolution can be set to 7 bit, 9 bit, 10 bit,
The signal acquisition circuit comprises an infrared 12 bit and the sampling frequency is about 50K, 27.7k,
sensor, a filter and an amplifier circuit. The circuit diagram 14.7K, 7.5k. Because the sensor signal is a microvolt level
shown in Figure 4. small signal. Even through the instrumentation amplifier
The thermometer is a thermopile sensor. It consists of a AD623, the small signal is still a millivolt level signal, so we
number of thermocouples in series. Its infrared absorption choose the 12 bit resolution, which contains 1 symbols and
film has a small heat capacity, so the film temperature rise the 11 digit value, helping to signal detection. At the same
easily. TS118-3 also has a thermistor. We choose the time, the sensor signal frequency is small, the sampling
temperature sensor TS118-3 from HLP company of frequency of 7.5K can meet the demand.
Germany, because it is suitable for measuring the ear gently
forehead. B. The MCU Control Program
As shown in Fig. 4, the filter circuit keeps the amplifier The MCU control program is is handled by CC2540
passband characteristic at the same time can effectively enhanced 8051 core. It uses the osal multi task resource
restrain the high frequency noise. The resistor R26 and the allocation mechanism combining with the Bluetooth 4.0
protocol stack. It mainly completes three functions:
capacitor C27 make up a RC low pass filter, its bandwidth is 1) controlling the work state of the system;
1/䯴 2π R26 C27䯵 , R26 and R25 need to be big enough to 2) controlling the AD sampling of temperature signal;
3) communicating with the mobile phone by Bluetooth
isolate two differential input. But if R26 and R25 is too 4.0, including the mobile phone control commands reception
large, they will significantly increase the circuit noise. The and data transmission to the mobile phone.
resistor R26  R25 and the capacitor C28 make up a low MCU program control flow flowchart is shown in figure
5.
pass filter, its bandwidth is 1/䯴 2π C28
䯴 R26 +R25䯵 䯵 .

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 4) the battery icon: displaying the thermometer current
battery.
V. EXPERIMENT AND TEST
In order to verify the feasibility of the system, we use a
Bluetooth thermometer to measure a healthy person at room
temperature (25ഒ) and different time, and try to keep the
room temperature constantly. The Bluetooth thermometer
works reliably. The body temperature measured by the
Bluetooth thermometer and the actual temperature measured
by mercurial thermometer are shown in Table I.

TABLE I. THE BODY TEMPERATURE AND THE ACTUAL

TEMPERATURE

THE BODY THE ACTUAL DEVIATIONഒ

TEMPERATUREഒ TEMPERATUREഒ

36.4 36.5 0.1

36.6 36.8 0.2

Figure 5. MCU program control flow flowchart.
37.1 36.9 -0.2
C. Mobile Phone APP
The mobile phone APP through Bluetooth 4.0 receives 36.0 36.3 0.3
AD sampling temperature data, and display it in a coordinate
axis. Its first edition interface is shown in figure 6. VI. CONCLUSION
The hardware design and software design of the
thermometer based on Bluetooth 4.0, achieve the rapid
measurement of body temperature, the reliable data
transmission between the thermometer and the mobile phone
and the display of the temperature data for in the mobile
phone. the detection part of the whole system uses low
power design, prolonging the life of the battery. With the
temperature data displayed by Mobile phone APP, the
mobile phone not only make full use of its resources, but also
can display the body temperature changes for a long time.
REFERENCES
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[3] M. Y. Alan., “Principle of Non-contacting Infrared Temperature
Figure 6. The first edition interface of the APP. Measurement.Proceedings Of The International symposium, ”Reno,
NV, USA,1998,(44):582
The interface consists of five buttons, an icon and a [4] M. J. Haugf., “Infrared Thermometer for Low Emissivity Metals,”
coordinate axis: ISA Transactions,1982,22(3):27-28
1) the connection button: finding and connecting to [5] Chunhua Zhao, Yuntao Xu, Chunyu Ning, “Design of temperature
detection system of LHI878 pyroelectric infrared sensor,” China:
Bluetooth thermometer device; Infrared and Laser Engineering press, 2013.
2) the Setting button: setting Bluetooth thermometer
[6] Texas Instruments.CC2540 Datasheet [EB/OL] (2013-6-24).
device name, obtaining the thermometer firmware Available: http://www.ti.com/product/cc2540
information and temperature data etc; [7] Yujie Miao, “Title of paper with only first word capitalized,” China:
3) the week, month, year button: the axis displays Yan Shan University, 2005.
temperature data for a week, a month or a year;

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