A battery-free energy harvesting system with the switch capacitor sampler (SCS) technique for high power factor in smart meter applications

This paper presented a battery-free energy harvesting system with an auto-startup mechanism to achieve AC power monitoring. The proposed switch capacitor sampler (SCS) technique suppresses the total harmonic distortion (THD) since the energy is derived from the AC power lines. It can improve the performance of the power factor correction (PFC) in the harvesting system to achieve high power utilization. As a result, the proposed method can be used as a smart meter for monitoring or controlling the power delivery decision. A battery-free energy harvesting system with the SCS control technique was implemented by using 0.25-µm CMOS process. The die area is 0.25 mm2. The PF value can be raised to 0.98 with low THD of 17%.

[1]  A. von Jouanne,et al.  Piezoelectric micro-power generation interface circuits , 2006, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[2]  A.P. Chandrakasan,et al.  Next generation micro-power systems , 2008, 2008 IEEE Symposium on VLSI Circuits.

[3]  Chris Van Hoof,et al.  Capacitive Power-Management Circuit for Micropower Thermoelectric Generators with a 2.1μW Controller , 2008, 2008 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference - Digest of Technical Papers.

[4]  L.A. Kojovic.  Comparative Performance Characteristics of Current Transformers and Rogowski Coils used for Protective Relaying Purposes , 2007, 2007 IEEE Power Engineering Society General Meeting.

[5]  Leila Parsa,et al.  An Efficient AC–DC Step-Up Converter for Low-Voltage Energy Harvesting , 2010, IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics.

[6]  Kai Strunz,et al.  A 20 mV Input Boost Converter With Efficient Digital Control for Thermoelectric Energy Harvesting , 2010, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[7]  Gabriel A. Rincón-Mora,et al.  A single-inductor AC-DC piezoelectric energy-harvester/battery-charger IC converting ±(0.35 to 1.2V) to (2.7 to 4.5V) , 2010, 2010 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference - (ISSCC).

[8]  L. Parsa,et al.  A Novel direct AC/DC converter for efficient low voltage energy harvesting , 2008, 2008 34th Annual Conference of IEEE Industrial Electronics.

[9]  Gabriel A. Rincón-Mora,et al.  A rectifier-free piezoelectric energy harvester circuit , 2009, 2009 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems.

[10]  Y. Amemiya,et al.  A 300 nW, 15 ppm/$^{\circ}$C, 20 ppm/V CMOS Voltage Reference Circuit Consisting of Subthreshold MOSFETs , 2009, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[11]  K. Sakui,et al.  A CMOS bandgap reference circuit with sub-1-V operation , 1999 .