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access icon free Start-up circuit for low-power indoor light energy harvesting applications

  • Author(s): C. Carvalho 1  and  N. Paulino 2
    • View affiliations
    • Affiliations: 1: Rua Conselheiro Emídio Navarro, Instituto Superior de Engenharia de Lisboa (ADEETC–ISEL–IPL) and UNINOVA, nº1, CEDET (Gab. F), 1949-014 Lisboa, Portugal;
      2: UNINOVA/CTS and Departamento de Engenharia Electrotécnica, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Campus FCT/UNL, 2829-516 Caparica, Portugal
  • Source: Volume 49, Issue 10, 09 May 2013, p. 669 – 671
    DOI:  10.1049/el.2012.3418 , Print ISSN 0013-5194, Online ISSN 1350-911X
© The Institution of Engineering and Technology
Received 02/10/2012, Published

A start-up circuit, used in a micro-power indoor light energy harvesting system, is described. This start-up circuit achieves two goals: first, to produce a reset signal, power-on-reset (POR), for the energy harvesting system, and secondly, to temporarily shunt the output of the photovoltaic (PV) cells, to the output node of the system, which is connected to a capacitor. This capacitor is charged to a suitable value, so that a voltage step-up converter starts operating, thus increasing the output voltage to a larger value than the one provided by the PV cells. A prototype of the circuit was manufactured in a 130 nm CMOS technology, occupying an area of only 0.019 mm2. Experimental results demonstrate the correct operation of the circuit, being able to correctly start-up the system, even when having an input as low as 390 mV using, in this case, an estimated energy of only 5.3 pJ to produce the start-up.

Inspec keywords: power convertors; energy harvesting; solar cells; capacitors; CMOS integrated circuits

Other keywords: PV cells; power-on-reset; photovoltaic cells; capacitor; micropower indoor light energy harvesting system; CMOS technology; voltage 390 mV; low-power indoor light energy harvesting; voltage step-up converter; start-up circuit

Subjects: Energy harvesting; CMOS integrated circuits; Energy harvesting; Solar cells and arrays; Photoelectric conversion; solar cells and arrays

References

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      • 3. Stark, B.H., Szarka, G.D., Rooke, E.D.: ‘Start-up circuit with low minimum operating power for microwatt energy harvesters’, IET Circuits Devices Syst., 2011, 5, (4), pp. 267–274 (doi: 10.1049/iet-cds.2010.0199).
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      • 5. Mendez-Delgado, E., Serrano, G.J.: ‘A 300 mV low-voltage start-up circuit for energy harvesting systems’. Proc. of IEEE Int. Symp. on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS 2011), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, May 2011, pp. 829–832.
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      • 6. Carvalho, C., Lavareda, G., Lameiro, J., Paulino, N.: ‘A step-up μ-power converter for solar energy harvesting applications, using hill climbing maximum power point tracking’. Proc. of IEEE Int. Symp. on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS 2011), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, May 2011, pp. 1924–1927.
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