A CMOS IC for the real-time and wireless diagnostics of high concentration solar cells

Author

Felini, C. ; Merenda, M. ; Della Corte, F.G.

Author_Institution

DIEES, Univ. Mediterranea of Reggio Calabria, Reggio Calabria, Italy

fYear

2015

fDate

3-5 Feb. 2015

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

4

Abstract

In this paper, an alternative approach for the measuring and transmission of vital parameters related to High Concentration PhotoVoltaics (HCPV) modules under illumination has been proposed, allowing recovering information from every individual cell. The valuable cell parameters such as temperature and illumination are measured with a dedicated VLSI integrated circuit (IC) that contains also an integrated 2.4 GHz transmitter with an On-Chip-Antenna (OCA) - made on the top metal layer of the same die - that sends the collected data wirelessly to a base station allowing a complete diagnostic of the module performances over the years. On-Off Keying (OOK) modulation is used to send the sensors data. The IC has been designed and realized in AMS CMOS 0.35μm technology.

Keywords

CMOS integrated circuits; VLSI; amplitude shift keying; solar cells; AMS CMOS technology; CMOS IC; HCPV modules; OOK modulation; VLSI integrated circuit; frequency 2.4 GHz; high concentration photovoltaics; high concentration solar cells; on-chip-antenna; on-off keying modulation; size 0.35 mum; top metal layer; transmitter; wireless diagnostics; CMOS integrated circuits; Monitoring; Photovoltaic cells; Sensor phenomena and characterization; Temperature sensors; Wireless sensor networks; CMOS technology; LC oscillator; Light sensor; PTAT;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

AISEM Annual Conference, 2015 XVIII

Conference_Location

Trento

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/AISEM.2015.7066861

Filename

7066861