Towards System-Level Simulation of a Miniature Electromagnetic Energy Harvester Model

Abstract

Energy harvesting, a solution to provide a lifetime power supply to wireless sensor nodes, has attracted widespread attention in the last two decades. An energy harvester collects ambient energy, e.g., solar, thermal, or vibration energy, and transforms it into electrical energy. In this work, we work on an electromagnetic energy harvester model, which is composed of four magnets oscillating along a coil. Such a device converts the vibrational energy into electrical energy. We reproduce the electromagnetic energy harvester model in finite element-based software. In order to include this model in a system-level simulation, the methodology of extracting a look-up table-based equivalent circuit model is presented. Such an equivalent circuit model enables the interaction of the electromagnetic energy harvester model with both electrical and mechanical compact models at the system-level. Furthermore, the matrix interpolation-based and algebraic parameterization-based parametric model order reduction methods are suggested for speeding up the generation of the equivalent circuit model and the design optimization process with respect to magnet dimensions. The efficiencies of these two methods are investigated and compared.