A Power Management Unit With 40 dB Switching-Noise-Suppression for a Thermal Harvesting Array

Abstract

A high efficiency, maximum power point tracking (MPPT) power management unit (PMU), with 3.6 quiescent power, aimed at a thermoelectric generator (TEG) array is presented. The proposed energy harvesting PMU is made up of a boost converter with a cascaded capacitor-less low drop-out (CL-LDO) voltage regulator. The segmented approach allows the PMU to match the TEG array's changing dynamic series resistance via the boost converter and simultaneously provide voltage regulation with adaptive, high switching noise rejection via the CL-LDO. The boost converter's switching frequency is tracked via a Sense-and-Control loop which modifies the CL-LDO's power supply rejection (PSR) characteristics to place a notch in the PSR transfer function around the average. Experimental results show an overall system efficiency better than 57% @ 1.6 V output voltage, PSR of 40 dB at , and a notch-tuning range of 15-65 kHz. The total active area is 0.93 in 0.5 CMOS.

A 60 mV Input Voltage, Process Tolerant Start-Up System for Thermoelectric Energy Harvesting

“…Using ambient energy sources is the key to realize battery- less electronics. Ambient sources include: light [2], RF signals [3], mechanical vibration [4], thermal gradients [5][6] [7], etc. Among these sources, thermal gradients are almost available everywhere, especially in biomedical implants and body-worn devices [8].…”

A Fast-Transient Output Capacitor-Less Low-Dropout Regulator Using Active-Feedback and Current-Reuse Feedforward Compensation

“…Therefore, a power management integrated circuit (PMIC) for efficiently managing battery power and supplying various voltages has been attracting great interest [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]. As shown in Figure 1, the PMIC which is combined a switching DC-DC converter and low dropout linear regulator (LDO) is commonly used for converting DC voltage [6][7][8][9][10][11]. A high efficiency switching converter is used to convert DC voltage, and LDOs are used to remove the switching ripple and provide stable power to sub-circuits.…”

A Time-Interleave-Based Power Management System with Maximum Power Extraction and Health Protection Algorithm for Multiple Microbial Fuel Cells for Internet of Things Smart Nodes

“…Harvesting enough energy from the environment where the WSN is physically located, can be a plausible solution to extend the battery life of a remote sensor and even fully power it for prolonged periods of time [9,10]. The sources of energy that can be harvested from the ambient include solar, kinetic, thermal gradient, radiofrequency, electromagnetic and Microbial Fuel Cells (MFCs) [11][12][13][14][15][16].…”