Solar Powered DC - DC Converter for Wearable Devices

Wearable devices are emerging to be a viable option in medical, sports and wellness fields. These low power sensor devices can measure vital signal such as heartbeat rate, blood pressure or temperature. The wearable device module has to be powered for continuous operation. An investigation into the design of stand - alone photovoltaic for wearable device application is presented. This paper focuses on supplying power to the wearable device from a flexible photovoltaic cell. A flexible photovoltaic cell is proposed to be fabricated using CuO/ZnO thin film by sputtering deposition method. For monitoring the health result the proposed system uses Bluetooth module which can acquire those vital signal and wirelessly communicate to our remote device e.g. mobile phone. A microcontroller is used as an interface between sensor and Bluetooth. A rechargeable battery is used as a backup. This paper uses a photovoltaic cell equipped with DC-DC boost converter and maximum power point tracker to optimize the maximum power available so as to simultaneously supply power to the battery and wearable device. This system is modelled using MATLAB SIMULINK. To extend the operational life of the overall system a flexible photovoltaic cell is proposed.