An Asymmetric Adaptive Approach to Enhance Output Power in Kinetic-Based Microgenerators

A Coulomb force parametric generator (CFPG) can be used to harvest energy from the natural human body motion. This micro-harvester is the architecture of choice for integration with small wearable (or implantable) sensors. In this paper, an asymmetric adaptive approach to estimate the electrostatic force in a CFPG using the acceleration waveform is proposed. Simulations using human motion measurements show that the proposed approach achieves considerable gain in the harvested energy compared to the previously studied symmetric adaptive methodologies.