Comparison between four piezoelectric energy harvesting circuits

Abstract

This paper investigates and compares the efficiencies of four different interfaces for vibration-based energy harvesting systems. Among those four circuits, two circuits adopt the synchronous switching technique, in which the circuit is switched synchronously with the vibration. In this study, a simple source-less trigger circuit used to control the synchronized switch is proposed and two interface circuits of energy harvesting systems are designed based on the trigger circuit. To validate the effectiveness of the proposed circuits, an experimental system was established and the power harvested by those circuits from a vibration beam was measured. Experimental results show that the two new circuits can increase the harvested power by factors 2.6 and 7, respectively, without consuming extra power in the circuits.

Keywords

energy harvesting / piezoelectric materials / synchronized switching

References

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 50775110).

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

2014 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg