Abstract
This study presents a radiofrequency (RF)-energy-harvesting integrated circuit (IC) for powering wireless sensor networks with a wireless transmitter with an industrial, scientific, and medical (ISM) of 915 MHz. The proposed IC comprises an RF-direct current (DC) rectifier, an over-voltage protection circuit, a low-power low-dropout (LDO) voltage regulator, and a charger control circuit. In the RF-DC rectifier circuit, a six-stage Dickson voltage multiplier circuit is used to improve the received RF signal to a DC voltage by using native MOS with a small threshold voltage. The over-voltage protection circuit is used to prevent a high-voltage breakdown phenomenon from the RF front-end circuit, particularly for near-field communication. A low-power LDO regulator is designed to provide stable voltage by using zero frequency compensation and a voltage-trimming feedback. Charging current is amplified N times by using a current mirror to rapidly and stably charge a battery in the proposed charger control circuit. The obtained results revealed that the maximum power conversion efficiency of the proposed RF-energy-harvesting IC was 40.56% at an input power of −6 dBm, an output voltage of 1.5 V, and a load of 30 kΩ. A chip area of the RF-energy-harvesting IC was 0.58 × 0.49 mm2, including input/output pads, and power consumption was 42 μW.
Highlights
Energy harvesting for supplying power to low-power electronic devices has recently become mainstream research
A comparison between the reference voltage Vref and a feedback value indicates that the voltage difference between the positive and negative terminals was amplified as an output voltage of the error amplifier (EA), which was connected to a pass transistor for providing a stable supply voltage Vdd by controlling the load current flow through the pass transistor [23]
When the input voltage varied from 1.7 V to 2.0 V and the reference voltage was 1.4 V, the LDO regulator performed with a quiescent current of 317 nA, and a maximum power efficiency of 84.835% was obtained at an input power Pin of −10 dBm
Summary
Energy harvesting for supplying power to low-power electronic devices has recently become mainstream research. A wearable RF-energy-harvesting device, which comprises a U-shaped dipole antenna, matching network, RF-DC converter, and DC–DC converter, was presented in [3] for supplying power to smart jewelry. This design converts a 915-MHz RF signal into a constant DC output voltage of 3.1 V at an input power of −6 dBm, which is suitable for supplying power to a fitness monitor pendant. LDO circuit and sent to the charging control circuit for charging storage devices passed through the low-power circuit and sent to the charging control circuit for charging (MP)] and capacitor (CP) can be considered as a rectifier with a small ripple voltage across C p If input power was set to −10 dBm at an operating frequency of 915 MHz, a suitable inductor lower than 47 μH was selected
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