Micro energy management for energy harvesting at maximum power point

This paper describes an efficient technique for maximum power point tracking of an energy harvesting device. The proposed technique is controlling the operating voltage of maximum power by transferring energy from the harvesting device. With the technique, an energy-aware architecture of the energy management IC maintains the maximum point with low power consumption that is appropriate for low energy generation from the harvesting. An experiment shows that the technique with the IC fabricated in a 0.18μm process maximizes the energy transfer power with negligible error. With a comparison of the energy transfers between a direct transfer from a source to a battery with no conversion loss and the maximum power transfer with the IC, the proposed technique is verified to be more efficient for the low energy harvesting.