Synchronous Electric Charge Extraction for low voltage Piezoelectric Energy Harvester array

Abstract

This paper introduces a topology to combine multiple low voltage Piezoelectric Energy Harvesters with the goal of widening its harvestable frequency range and improving the power output. The architecture uses a shared inductor scheme and a rectifier-free approach. The proposed harvester is able to handle multiple harvesters efficiently by harvesting the peak energy from each harvester. The proposed topology and its circuit implementation has been validated using SPICE simulation. The circuit consumes about 2.6 µA @ 3V per energy harvester and is capable of harvesting energy from low voltage sources down to 0.4Vpk.