A Self-Powered Electronic Interface for Electromagnetic Energy Harvester

• Published in: IEEE transactions on power electronics Vol. 26; no. 11; pp. 3174 - 3182
• Main Authors: Dallago, E., Danioni, A., Marchesi, M., Nucita, V., Venchi, G.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York, NY IEEE 01.11.2011; Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Applied sciences; Capacitors; Converters; Electric power; Electrical engineering. Electrical power engineering; Electrical equipment; electromagnetic transducer; Electromagnetics; Electronic equipment and fabrication. Passive components, printed wiring boards, connectics; Electronics; Energy; Energy harvesting; Energy. Thermal use of fuels; Exact sciences and technology; Frequencies; Integrated circuit modeling; Magnetoelectric, magnetostrictive, magnetoacoustic, magnetooptic and magnetothermal devices. Spintronics; Power electronics, power supplies; Printed circuit boards; Rational use of energy: conservation and recovery of energy; self-powered circuitry; Semiconductor electronics. Microelectronics. Optoelectronics. Solid state devices; Switches; switching power converter; Transducers; Autonomous system; Power converter; Switching convertors; Energy harvesting; Transducer; self-powered circuitry; Frequency converter; Resonance frequency; Electromagnetism; Up converter; Interface energy; Energy storage capacitor; Printed circuit board; Energy recovery; Alternative continuous converter; Power electronics; Experimental study; Electromagnetic device; switching power converter; Vibration transducer; Safe operating area; electromagnetic transducer; System simulation; Printed circuit; AC-DC power convertors; Capacitor
• ISSN: 0885-8993; 1941-0107
• DOI: 10.1109/TPEL.2011.2146277

This paper presents a self-powered, active electronic interface for an energy harvesting system including a vibration-based electromagnetic transducer. The transducer provides a peak voltage of 3.25 V when operated close to its mechanical resonance frequency (about 10.4 Hz) and the power converter has been designed to transfer the harvested energy to a storage capacitor. The circuit is a full-cycle inductive step-up ac/dc converter able to process every voltage pulse coming from the transducer; furthermore, it is supplied by the harvested energy, making the system fully autonomous. The interface has been designed exploiting an accurate model of the transducer in simulations. A printed circuit board version of the interface has been simulated and built to gather experimental results and validate the idea. The system demonstrated to be able to build a voltage across the storage capacitor, which is limited only by the safe operating area of the devices.