A Highly Efficient Switched-Capacitor Voltage Boost Converter with Nano-Watt MPPT Controller for Low-Voltage Energy Harvesting

Toshihiro OZAKI; Tetsuya HIROSE; Takahiro NAGAI; Keishi TSUBAKI; Nobutaka KUROKI; Masahiro NUMA

doi:10.1587/transfun.E99.A.2491

Special Section on VLSI Design and CAD Algorithms

A Highly Efficient Switched-Capacitor Voltage Boost Converter with Nano-Watt MPPT Controller for Low-Voltage Energy Harvesting

Toshihiro OZAKI, Tetsuya HIROSE, Takahiro NAGAI, Keishi TSUBAKI, Nobutaka KUROKI, Masahiro NUMA

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Keywords: energy harvesting, DC-DC converter, charge pump, MPPT, low-power

JOURNAL RESTRICTED ACCESS

2016 Volume E99.A Issue 12 Pages 2491-2499

DOI https://doi.org/10.1587/transfun.E99.A.2491

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Abstract

This paper presents a fully integrated voltage boost converter consisting of a charge pump (CP) and maximum power point tracking (MPPT) controller for ultra-low power energy harvesting. The converter is based on a conventional CP circuit and can deliver a wide range of load current by using nMOS and pMOS driver circuits for highly efficient charge transfer operation. The MPPT controller we propose dissipates nano-watt power to extract maximum power regardless of the harvester's power generation conditions and load current. The measurement results demonstrated that the circuit converted a 0.49-V input to a 1.46-V output with 73% power conversion efficiency when the output power was 348µW. The circuit can operate at an extremely low input voltage of 0.21V.

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