Low Voltage Energy Harvesting Systems Using Coil Inductance of Electromagnetic Microgenerators

Direct ac-to-dc power converters used for vibration based low voltage energy harvesting are more efficient than the conventional two stage power converters where diode bridge rectifiers are used. In the single inductor based direct ac-to-dc converters external inductors are connected to the output of the microgenerators for boost operation. This work proposes to utilize the coil inductance of the electromagnetic microgenerators for boost operation and to eliminate the external inductor of direct ac-to-dc boost converter. This improves efficiency, reduces the component count and size of the converters, and it is beneficial for circuit integration. Based on this concept inductorless ac-to-dc converters are used in energy harvesting systems. Circuit simulation, finite element simulation, and co-simulations results are presented to validate the proposed low voltage energy harvesting systems.