Application of a sigma-delta modulator for adiabatic charging of an output stage capacitor

Abstract

ABSTRACT In energy harnessing applications there are instances where energy should be transferred from a low-power, low-leakage backup battery to a temporary power delivery output capacitor. The high power delivery feature of the storage capacitor usually comes at the price of higher leakage current and thus it cannot replace the long-term energy storage backup battery. This paper presents a CMOS capacitor charger circuit which connects a long term low power battery to a short-burst high power delivery capacitor. The proposed circuit uses a switching output stage with an external inductor to reduce the dissipation during the capacitor charge-up cycle. A sigma-delta modulation approach is used to control the power switches. Under low power transfer scenarios which perform transfer in a longer duration, the proposed approach shows better performance compared with previously presented techniques. It is shown that under different transfer durations the control section only consumes 970nWs. The efficiency of the proposed circuit is more than 90% for average input powers in the 0.7 mW to 2 mW range.