An Energy Management Circuit for Self-Powered Ubiquitous Sensor Modules Using Vibration-Based Energy

Jun PAN
Yasuaki INOUE
Zheng LIANG

Publication
IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Fundamentals of Electronics, Communications and Computer Sciences   Vol.E90-A    No.10    pp.2116-2123
Publication Date: 2007/10/01
Online ISSN: 1745-1337
DOI: 10.1093/ietfec/e90-a.10.2116
Print ISSN: 0916-8508
Type of Manuscript: Special Section PAPER (Special Section on Nonlinear Theory and its Applications)
Category: Nonlinear Circuits
Keyword: 
ubiquitous,  sensor module,  energy management,  two-tank,  vibration,  battery-free,  

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Summary: 
An energy management circuit is proposed for self-powered ubiquitous sensor modules using vibration-based energy. With the proposed circuit, the sensor modules work with low duty cycle operation. Moreover, a two-tank circuit as a part of the energy management circuit is utilized to solve the problem that the average power density of ambient energy always varies with time while the power consumption of the sensor modules is constant and larger than it. In addition, the long start-up time problem is also avoided with the timing control of the proposed energy management circuit. The CMOS implementation and silicon verification results of the proposed circuit are also presented. Its validity is further confirmed with a vibration-based energy generation. The sensor module is used to supervise the vibration of machines and transfer the vibration signal discontinuously. A piezoelectric element acts as the vibration-to-electricity converter to realize battery-free operation.

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