A High-Voltage Energy-Harvesting Interface for Irregular Kinetic Energy Harvesting in IoT Systems with 1365% Improvement Using All-NMOS Power Switches and Ultra-low Quiescent Current Controller

Abstract

An energy-harvesting interface for kinetic energy harvesting from high-voltage piezoelectric and triboelectric generators is proposed in this paper. Unlike the conventional kinetic energy-harvesting interfaces optimized for continuous sinusoidal input, the proposed harvesting interface can efficiently handle irregular and random high voltage energy inputs. An N-type mosfet (NMOS)-only power stage design is introduced to simplify power switch drivers and minimize conduction loss. Controller active mode power is also reduced by introducing a new voltage peak detector. For efficient operation with potentially long intervals between random kinetic energy inputs, standby power consumption is minimized by monitoring the input with a 43 pW wake-up controller and power-gating all other circuits during the standby intervals. The proposed harvesting interface can harvest energy from a wide range of energy inputs, 10 s of nJ to 10 s of µJ energy/pulse, with an input voltage range of 5–200 V and an output range of 2.4–4 V under discontinuous as well as continuous excitation. The proposed interface is examined in two scenarios, with integrated power stage devices (maximum input 45 V) and with discrete power stage devices (maximum input 200 V), and the harvesting efficiency is improved by up to 600% and 1350%, respectively, compared to the case when harvesting is performed with a full bridge rectifier.

A Piezoelectric Harvesting Interface with Capacitive Partial Electric Charge Extraction for Energy Harvesting from Irregular High-Voltage Input

“…Otherwise, all the other circuits are power gated to minimize the static power loss. When input is detected, the WUC triggers the TRIG signal to activate the clock generator and voltage peak detector (VPD) [8] to track the PZT voltage and determine when the V RECT reaches its peak voltage (V PK ). To deal with high PZT voltage, the VPD is also interfaced with V RECT using a high-voltage capacitor, C 2 .…”

“…To keep the static power loss low, the harvesting circuit needs to be activated only when deformation is applied to the PZT. A low-power WUC (based on [8]) detects this deformation and activates the harvesting operation, as shown in Figure 6. The WUC needs to trigger (TRIG) when the PZT voltage exceeds a certain threshold voltage (V TH ).…”

“…Ambient energy harvesting has been adapted as a solution to prolong battery life or make these devices self-powered using various harvesting sources [1][2][3][4][5]. However, to harvest energy from vibrations produced by human motion, piezoelectric transducers (PZTs) [6][7][8] and triboelectric nano-generators (TENG) [9,10] are the most suitable options.…”

Dual Piezoelectric Energy Investing and Harvesting Interface for High-Voltage Input

“…To address all of the abovementioned challenges, a novel harvesting interface circuit is proposed. Unlike prior works [12,29,37], this work proposes an integrated-circuit-based harvesting solution for multiple PZTs. The power stage is designed using bi-directional switches, which enables bi-directional energy transfer for both energy investment and storage, while only using a single inductor.…”

“…Moreover, as harvesting sources (piezo/tribo-electric transducers) are improved, higher energy can be extracted with higher input voltage [ 28 , 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 ]. Designing a circuit to harvest energy from these high-input voltages is a non-trivial challenge, and it becomes even more challenging when these output voltages can exceed the process limit.…”