Parametric analysis of boost converter for energy harvesting using piezoelectric for micro devices

Lower amount of power delivered from piezoelectric based ambient vibration energy harvester devices is a barrier to adopt the technology for different applications. Energy harvesting circuitry can enhance power output to provide a regulated DC supply to the end application. In this paper, various circuit simulations are carried out to investigate output power enhancement. A parametric analysis of a boost circuit simulation using Cadence OrCAD Capture PSpice software with input less than 1 V is carried out to find the optimum parameters including, the switching frequency rise and fall times, duty cycle, inductance and load capacitance value. Simulation results show that passive component based boost converter can significantly increase the voltage output of an ambient vibration based energy harvester. The output voltage increases linearly with the increase of single supply voltage input range 0.1 V to 0.5 V, to the output voltage range of 7 to 35 V. The optimum parameter found for 10 kΩ load is 100 μH inductor and 1μF load capacitor. A comparison of output performance of the boost circuit with existing literature is presented. The ease of the boost converter circuit will facilitate the development of an efficient piezoelectric energy harvesters for low power applications like automotive, healthcare portable devices, and wireless sensor networks.