Adaptive subthreshold switched capacitor voltage boost for thermoelectric generation

Author

Brito, R. ; Barba, M. ; Palakurthi, P. ; Nemir, D. ; MacDonald, E.

Author_Institution

Electr. & Comput. Eng., Univ. of Texas at El Paso, El Paso, TX, USA

fYear

2014

fDate

6-9 Oct. 2014

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

2

Abstract

Thermoelectric (TE) generation often provides voltages that are not directly usable by traditional electronics as levels are too low from the TE cell. By implementing charge pumps optimized for these ultra-low levels, a proposed circuit technique is described that can boost the TE output to levels that can used for energy harvesting applications. To improve efficiency, the architecture included Maximum Power Point Tracking and ultra-low power digital control, which can be implemented with subthreshold logic.

Keywords

charge pump circuits; low-power electronics; maximum power point trackers; thermoelectric conversion; MPPT; TE cell; adaptive subthreshold switched capacitor voltage boost; charge pumps; efficiency improvement; energy harvesting applications; maximum power point tracking; subthreshold logic; thermoelectric generation; ultra-low levels; ultra-low power digital control; Capacitors; Charge pumps; Computer architecture; Educational institutions; Magnetics; Microprocessors; Switches; Energy Harvesting; Subthreshold Logic; Thermoelectric;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

SOI-3D-Subthreshold Microelectronics Technology Unified Conference (S3S), 2014 IEEE

Conference_Location

Millbrae, CA

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/S3S.2014.7028231

Filename

7028231