Self-powered micro-watt level piezoelectric energy harvesting system with wide input voltage range

This paper presents a micro-watt level energy harvesting system for piezoelectric transducers with a wide input voltage range. Many such applications utilizing vibration energy harvesting have a widely varying input voltage and need an interface that can accommodate both low and high input voltages in order to harvest as much energy as possible. The proposed system consists of two rectifiers, both implemented as negative voltage converters followed by active-diodes, and three switched-capacitor DC–DC converters to either step-up or step-down and regulate to the target voltage. The system has been implemented in a 0.18 μm CMOS process and the chip measures 3 mm2. Measurements show a low voltage drop across the rectifiers and high peak power efficiency of the DC–DC converters (68.7–82.2%) with an input voltage range of 0.45–5.5 V for the complete system. Used standalone, the DC–DC converters support input voltages between 0.5 and 11 V while maintaining an output voltage of 1.8 V at an output power of 16.2 μW. The ratio of each converter is selectable to be either 1:2, 1:3, or 1:4.

[1]  David Blaauw,et al.  A Successive-Approximation Switched-Capacitor DC–DC Converter With Resolution of $V_{\text{IN}}/{2^N}$ for a Wide Range of Input and Output Voltages , 2016, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[2]  Paul K. Wright,et al.  A piezoelectric vibration based generator for wireless electronics , 2004 .

[3]  Yuanjin Zheng,et al.  A Self-Powered Power Conditioning IC for Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting From Short-Duration Vibrations , 2012, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems II: Express Briefs.

[4]  Patrick P. Mercier,et al.  A Recursive Switched-Capacitor DC-DC Converter Achieving $2^{N}-1$ Ratios With High Efficiency Over a Wide Output Voltage Range , 2014, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[5]  Gyu-Hyeong Cho,et al.  23.5 An energy pile-up resonance circuit extracting maximum 422% energy from piezoelectric material in a dual-source energy-harvesting interface , 2014, 2014 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference Digest of Technical Papers (ISSCC).

[6]  Michiel Steyaert,et al.  Fully Integrated Wide Input Voltage Range Capacitive DC-DC Converters: The Folding Dickson Converter , 2015, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[8]  Maurits Ortmanns,et al.  CMOS Integrated Highly Efficient Full Wave Rectifier , 2007, 2007 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems.

[9]  Gabriel A. Rincón-Mora,et al.  A Single-Inductor 0.35 µm CMOS Energy-Investing Piezoelectric Harvester , 2013, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[10]  David Blaauw,et al.  An Ultra-Low Power Fully Integrated Energy Harvester Based on Self-Oscillating Switched-Capacitor Voltage Doubler , 2014, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[11]  Yiannos Manoli,et al.  A Fully Autonomous Integrated Interface Circuit for Piezoelectric Harvesters , 2012, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[12]  Chris Van Hoof,et al.  Integrated capacitive power-management circuit for thermal harvesters with output power 10 to 1000µW , 2009, 2009 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference - Digest of Technical Papers.

[13]  Stefano Stanzione,et al.  A 1µW-to-1mW energy-aware interface IC for piezoelectric harvesting with 40nA quiescent current and zero-bias active rectifiers , 2013, 2013 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference Digest of Technical Papers.

[14]  David Blaauw,et al.  23.3 A 3nW fully integrated energy harvester based on self-oscillating switched-capacitor DC-DC converter , 2014, 2014 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference Digest of Technical Papers (ISSCC).

[15]  Atila Alvandpour,et al.  Self-oscillating multilevel switched-capacitor DC/DC converter for energy harvesting , 2017, 2017 IEEE Nordic Circuits and Systems Conference (NORCAS): NORCHIP and International Symposium of System-on-Chip (SoC).

[16]  Anantha Chandrakasan,et al.  An efficient piezoelectric energy-harvesting interface circuit using a bias-flip rectifier and shared inductor , 2009, 2009 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference - Digest of Technical Papers.

[17]  Enrico Santi,et al.  Comprehensive Review of Stability Criteria for DC Power Distribution Systems , 2014, IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications.

[18]  Michiel Steyaert,et al.  Scalable Parasitic Charge Redistribution: Design of High-Efficiency Fully Integrated Switched-Capacitor DC–DC Converters , 2016, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[19]  Khalil Najafi,et al.  A self-supplied inertial piezoelectric energy harvester with power-management IC , 2011, 2011 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference.