A NOVEL ARCHITECTURE OF MAXIMUM POWER POINT TRACKING FOR ULTRA-LOW-POWER BASED HYBRID ENERGY HARVESTER IN UBIQUITOUS DEVICES: A REVIEW

• Published in: American journal of applied sciences 2013-01, Vol.10 (10), p.1240-1240
• Main Authors: Mi, Michelle Lim Sern, Ali, Sawal Hamid Muhammad, Islam, Muhammad Shabiul
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Architecture (computers); Charging; Devices; Electronic devices; Energy harvesting; Harvesters; Maximum power; Microorganisms; Switching
• ISSN: 1546-9239; 1554-3641
• DOI: 10.3844/ajassp.2013.1240.1251

This research work presents a novel architecture of an Ultra-Low-Power (ULP) based Hybrid Energy Harvester (HEH) consisting of multiple input sources such as kinetic, thermal and solar energy, harvested from passive human power. Having multiple ambient sources mitigates limitations caused by single sources especially for bodily-worn applications; however, this results in impedance mismatch among the different integrated sources. Among other crucial sub-modules of the ULP-HEH are its Asynchronous Finite State Machine cum resource sharing arbiter to prioritize and share energy sources for overall power reduction, an efficient rectification scheme for the piezoelectric input, an adaptive feedback for ULP conditioning, Zero-Current Switching for semi-lossless switching, a self-start circuit for low ambient startup, a Boost converter, a Buck regulator, a fuzzy-based micro-battery charger and a de-multiplexer to switch between harvesting or charging capabilities. Also, this ULP-HEH is aimed at reducing power consumption to at least twice of conventional approaches. The proposed ULPHEH can be used for ULP bodily-worn electrical gadgets, wearable biomedical devices or to charge microbatteries, for portable electronic devices.