Experimental investigation of inductorless, single-stage boost rectification for sub-mW electromagnetic energy harvesters

Abstract

This paper demonstrates single-stage boost rectification for electromagnetic energy harvesters down to approximately 100 μW using practical low-power techniques. The circuits exploit the inductance of the generator, and operate without a discrete inductor, which facilitates integration. Experimental results demonstrate the importance of switching device selection, and the compound effect of the duty ratio on energy harvester output power and converter efficiency, as a function of load current. The circuits demonstrate up to 84.1% harvester utilization at the maximum extractable harvester power of 141 μW, and conversion efficiencies of 73.3% and 59.4% for half- and full-wave operation respectively, neglecting gate drive losses.