Experimental measurements of a low power CMOS analog MPPT power conditioning circuit for energy harvesting applications.

Abstract

This paper presents the complete measured performance and characterization of a fabricated power conditioning integrated circuit for energy harvesters with on-chip maximum power point tracking (MPPT) and external energy storage. This ultra-low power circuit employs an AC/DC-to-DC converter compatible with both AC and DC voltage energy harvesters. The MPPT design follows the perturbation and observation algorithm. This MPPT is capable of tracking the maximum power point of types of energy harvesters. The circuit is implemented using the AMS CMOS 0:35 μm high voltage technology and all the circuit blocks use analog electronic techniques, with the transistors operating in the sub-threshold region, in order to obtain a minimum power consumption. This power conditioning circuit consumes less than 2 μW while featuring an input voltage range of +-0:5V to +-50V and a power range from 10 μW to 200mW.