Abstract
Advancements in integrated circuit design have made it possible to have ultra-low-power wireless sensor nodes for health monitoring, smart buildings, industrial automation and for the automotive industry. These low power circuits generally have an Analog Front End (AFE) to sense weak signals, ADCs to digitize the sensed signals, microcontrollers for processing and low power radios for transmitting the low data rate information to a base station. These wireless sensors may be deployed in remote locations or may be in large numbers making battery replacement challenging. By harvesting the ambient energy, it is possible to power these systems and achieve near perpetual operation making battery replacement unnecessary. However, in order for these systems to extract energy from harvesters, these circuits need to not only be ultra-low-power themselves but they also need to ensure maximum available power is always extracted from the energy harvester. In this chapter, the basics of energy harvesting systems will be discussed with a focus on low power design techniques, maximum power extraction and battery management in these systems.
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Bandyopadhyay, S., Ramadass, Y.K. (2015). Energy Harvesting Opportunities for Low-Power Radios. In: Mercier, P., Chandrakasan, A. (eds) Ultra-Low-Power Short-Range Radios. Integrated Circuits and Systems. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14714-7_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14714-7_12
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
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