[2020; already taken] Single-Channel Energy Harvesting Power Converter for Heterogeneous Sources

There are several modalities of energy harvesting and each one of them is more suitable for a specific type of environment. For instance, outdoor applications or wearables might benefit from the use of PV panels, warehouse tracking might employ RF energy harvesters, and biomedical implants might use piezoelectric harvesters or wireless power transfer to charge their batteries.

Currently, power converters are designed from scratch for each of these applications, but, from an economic standpoint, this is very expensive and time-consuming. To tackle this problem, power converters with multiple input channels, on which heterogeneous sources can be connected, have been published in the literature. However, the simultaneous use of several harvesters is not a popular option due to the large size of the final product and its increased BOM cost. Therefore, a single IC that can harvest from any of these energy sources would be the most valuable solution.

Assignment

The goal of this project is to develop a PMIC front-end to connect NOWI’s DC-DC converter to different types of energy harvesters. The target input voltage ranges from 100 mV to 5 V, the input frequency ranges from DC to a few MHz, and the input power ranges from 10 μW to 100 mW.

Requirements

Student EE-ME with a genuine interest in energy harvesting and power management. Recommended completed courses are: Structured Electronic Design (EE4109), Analog Integrated Circuit Design (ET4252) and Power conversion techniques in CMOS technology (ET4382).

Contact

prof.dr.ir. Wouter Serdijn

Bioelectronics Group

Department of Microelectronics

Last modified: 2021-05-04