A multi-input energy harvesting system with independent energy harvesting block and power management block

Abstract

In the conventional approach widely used for multi-input energy harvesting (MIEH), energy harvesting, energy combining, and power conversion are performed integrally in an inductor sharing block through time multiplexing operations, which is not suitable for hot-pluggable systems. In the MIEH system proposed in this paper, an energy harvesting block (EHB) and a power management block (PMB) are independent of each other to increase the modularity of the system. Therefore, the EHB can be optimized to extract maximum power from energy sources, and the PMB can be focused on combining input energies and converting power effectively. This paper mainly focuses on the design and implementation of the EHB. For light, vibration, and thermal energy, the measured peak power efficiencies of the EHB implemented using a 0.35 μm CMOS process are 95.2%, 92.5%, and 95.5%, respectively. To confirm the functionality and effectiveness of the proposed MIEH system, a PMB composed of simple charge pump circuits and a power management unit has also been implemented and verified with the designed EHB.

Piezoelectric energy harvesting interface with fast open-circuit voltage sampling

“…The REC is designed with a 2-stage structure consisting of a negative voltage converter (NVC) and an act ive diode (AD), as illustrated in Figure 6(a). The two-stage REC [6,7] requires one more switch compared to the single-stage REC [2,3,11,21] leading to an increase in conduction loss. However, due to the require ment of only one comparator, the static power consumption decreases.…”

A self-startup DC-DC boost converter for thermal energy harvesting in a 0.35 μm CMOS process

“…A lot of research and development is in progress on micro-energy harvesting technology to drive low-power electronic systems by harvesting energy from the environment. Compared to the technology using light energy [1]- [6] or vibration energy [7]- [11], the technology using thermal energy [12]- [22] is somewhat slow in research and development due to the technical difficulty that the voltage level extracted from a thermal energy transducer is small. However, since the thermal energy is suitable for application to living organisms including humans, it is possible to create a variety of application fields such as health care systems.…”