Energy Harvesting from Non-Stationary Vibrations Using a Low-Threshold Voltage-Boost Rectifier Circuit

Abstract

This paper presents an energy harvesting technique that generates effective DC power from non-stationary weak environmental vibrations. We employ a voltage-boost rectifier (VBR) circuit utilizing small output from a vibrational energy harvester under non-stationary vibrations, which cannot be utilized by conventional rectifiers. A VBR circuit is fabricated by the complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology and packaged as a chip. The VBR chip is combined with an electret-based MEMS vibrational energy harvester and experimentally evaluated under non-stationary vibration. Measurement results show that the proposed system can deliver an effective DC voltage over 5.6 V from non-stationary vibrations (0.3 m/s²_RMS) while a conventional diode rectifier delivered 0.3 V or lower.