Design of DC–DC converter for harvesting maximum power from the multiple piezoelectric energy harvesters is a challenging task. In this work, a method to obtain maximum power from the multiple piezoelectric energy harvesters for supercapacitor charging is proposed. The method involves acquiring energy from each harvester by time-multiplexed operation of the multi-input buck–boost converter. The maximum power from each harvester is extracted by operating the converter to match the impedance of each harvester to the load impedance. The impedance matching is done by operating the converter with optimal duty cycle. The proposed method is experimentally evaluated, and the charging rate of supercapacitor is found to be higher while charging by the proposed method as compared to charging directly through the rectifier. The proposed method involves a single converter circuit for extracting energy from multiple piezoelectric energy harvesters, so that the component utilisation and its associated losses are very much reduced.

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Supercapacitor charging from piezoelectric energy harvesters using multi-input buck–boost converter

References

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