access icon free Switched-capacitor power sensing in low-power energy harvesting systems

© The Institution of Engineering and Technology
Received 07/11/2012, Published

A method for power sensing in low-power energy harvesting systems is presented. The technique utilises a small sense capacitor between the converter output and the main storage capacitor. The storage capacitor is disconnected from the converter for a short period of time and the change of sense capacitor voltage is measured. This change is proportional to the average output current of the converter for the period of the measurement, thus the relative output power can be determined using only voltage measurements. The method has been experimentally validated in a low-power energy harvesting system that employs a microcontroller-based control implementation.

Inspec keywords: energy harvesting; voltage measurement; microcontrollers; switched capacitor networks; capacitors

Other keywords: sense capacitor voltage; converter current; converter; low-power energy harvesting systems; main storage capacitor; microcontroller-based control implementation; switched-capacitor power sensing; voltage measurements; converter output

Subjects: Energy harvesting; Microprocessors and microcomputers; Energy harvesting; Capacitors

References

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      • Dayal, R., Parsa, L.: `Low power implementation of maximum energy harvesting scheme for vibration-based electromagnetic microgenerators', Proc. 26th Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition, Forth Worth, March 2011, TX, USA, p. 1949–1953.
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