Power Management Circuits for Self-Powered Systems Based on Solar Energy Harvesting

In this paper two types of power management circuits for solar energy harvesting self-powered systems are proposed. First, if the output voltage of a solar cell is enough to drive load, a power management unit(PMU) directly supplies load with solar energy. Second, if a solar cell outputs very low voltage less than 0.5V as in miniature solar cells or monolithic integrated solar cells such that it cannot directly power the load, a voltage booster is employed to step up the solar cell’s output voltage, and then PMU delivers the boosted voltage to the load. The proposed power management systems are designed and fabricated in a 0.18㎛ CMOS process, and their performances are compared and analyzed through measurements.

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