A fully-integrated power supply design for wireless implantable biosensors

This paper presents a fully integrated thermoelectric energy harvesting circuit with a new 20mV-input boost converter for biomedical applications. In order to have a fully-integrated system, on-chip inductor and capacitors are used. A charge-pump-like circuit is added to the end of the boost converter to further increase the output voltage and relax the boost converter. The low input voltage requirements allow operation from a thermoelectric generator powered by body heat. Using this approach, a thermoelectric energy harvesting circuit has been designed in a 90nm CMOS technology. According to HSPICE Simulation results, the circuit operates from input voltages as low as 20mV and generates output voltage as high as 1V when connecting to a load ranging from 0 to 10uW. The value of on-chip inductor and capacitors are 10nH and 40pF, respectively.