Optimal design of a boost-type DC-DC converter for PV power-supplied wireless sensor networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are widely installed during the last years for monitoring multiple parameters of interest over distributed areas in the environment, buildings and industries. The WSN nodes are frequently installed in geographically remote areas. Thus, they are power-supplied by renewable energy sources and a DC-DC power converter is employed for interfacing the generated energy to a battery bank and the electric load of the WSN node. In this paper, an optimization method is presented for performing circuit-level optimization of a Photovoltaic (PV) power-supplied Boost-type DC-DC power converter, which is employed in a WSN node. Using the proposed technique enables to calculate the optimal switching frequency and values of the components comprising the circuit of the DC-DC converter, such that either the power loss at nominal output power, or the total power loss during the year, or the Levelized Cost Of the Electricity generated (LCOE), are alternatively minimized. The design optimization and experimental results demonstrate the features of the proposed technique and confirm the performance superiority of the DC-DC converters, which are designed using the proposed method, compared to the non-optimized DC-DC converter structures.