Towards A Universal Power Manager for Multi-Source Energy Scavenging and Storage

Abstract

Power efficiency of multi-source integrated energy harvesting (EH), storage, and delivery is a fundamental requirement of emerging energy autonomous internet-of-thing (IoT) and internet-of-everything (IoE) devices. To make these energy autonomous devices practical, an enhanced, universal power management integrated circuit (PMIC) needs to be developed for efficiently controlling power on-chip. Currently, there exists no universal power manager (UPM) that seamlessly interfaces to DC and/or AC EH sources. The state of the art viable PMICs delivered by industry rely primarily on the following approach: for an unregulated DC source a DC/DC power manager is adopted whereas for an AC source, a front-end rectifier is inserted. This reduces efficiency and enhances distortion, requiring additional filtering.