Supervision : Dimitri GALAYKO

Smart power management silicon integrated interfaces for capacitive vibration energy harvesters

Vibrational energy is an attractive power source for self-powered wireless sensors. A mainstream harvesting technique for vibrational energy is electrostatic MEMS harvesters (e-VEH). Various circuit architectures have already been introduced with many successful implementation, yet a load interface that efficiently manages the harvested energy has rarely been reported.
In this work a load interface is proposed which is suited for any condition circuit (CC) implementing rectangular QV cycles. In general, a rectangular QV conditioning circuit has an optimum interval of which the energy harvested is maximised, thus the harvested energy should be periodically removed to maintain maximising the harvested energy. This is achieved through the load interface (LI). The LI proposed is a switched inductor capacitive architecture with a LI controller allowing the extraction of the energy in a multiple energy shot fashion. The LI controller incorporate an ultra low power clock for switching events, as well as low power comparator for switching decision. Power consumption is reduced by operating at a low supply voltage (1.1V).
The proposed load interface is implemented in AMS0.35HV technology with a mixed high voltage and low power control blocks. It takes into account the harvester operation to maximise the energy extracted from the harvester. It overcomes the constrained limited biasing power, and tackles resistive losses and power handling transis- tor long channels by transferring the energy in a multiple shots fashion. A complete CMOS implementation is proposed along with the simulation results with an average consumed power of the controller less than 100nW allowing the system to operate with input power levels as low as few hundreds of nanowatts.

2016-2017 Publications

• 2017
  • M. Bedier : “Circuits d’interface intégrés sur silicium pour une gestion optimale de la puissance dans les récupérateurs d’énergie vibratoire à transduction capacitive”, thesis, defence 12/20/2017, supervision Galayko, Dimitri (2017)
  • M. Bedier, A. Karami, D. Galayko, Ph. Basset : “Autonomous energy management interface for electrostatic series-parallel charge pump vibrational energy harvester”, 2017 15^th IEEE International New Circuits and Systems Conference (NEWCAS), Strasbourg, France, pp. 385-388, (IEEE) (2017)
  • A. Karami, D. Galayko, M. Bedier, Ph. Basset : “Analysis and Comparison of Charge-Pump Conditioning Circuits for Capacitive Electromechanical Energy Conversion”, Circuits and Systems (ISCAS), 2017 IEEE International Symposium on, Baltimore, United States, pp. 1-4, (IEEE) (2017)
  • M. Bedier, Ph. Basset, D. Galayko : “A Smart Load Interface and Voltage Regulator for Electrostatic Vibration Energy Harvester”, 16^th International Conference on Micro and Nanotechnology for Power Generation and Energy Conversion Applications (PowerMEMS 2016) 6–9 December 2016, Paris, France, vol. 773, Journal of Physics: Conference Series, Paris, France, pp. 012105, (Institute of Physics Publishing (IOP)), (ISBN: 9781510835306) (2017)
• 2016
  • M. Bedier, D. Galayko : “A smart energy extraction interface for electrostatic vibrational energy harvester”, 2016 IEEE International Conference on Electronics, Circuits and Systems (ICECS), Monte Carlo, Monaco, pp. 425-426, (IEEE) (2016)
  • M. Bedier, D. Galayko : “A 100nW Power Overhead Load Interface for Electrostatic Vibrational Energy Harvester with a High Biasing Voltage”, The 30^th EUROSENSORS conference (2016), Budapest, Hungary (2016)
  • M. Bedier, D. Galayko : “Multiple energy-shot load interface for electrostatic vibrational energy harvesters”, New Circuits and Systems Conference (NEWCAS), 2016 14^th IEEE International, Vancouver, BC, Canada (2016)
  • M. Bedier, D. Galayko : “Low Power Load Interface For Vibrational Energy MEMS harvesters”, Journées Nationales sur la Récupération et le Stockage d'Energie (JNRSE’2016), Bordeaux, France (2016)