A 1µW-to-1mW energy-aware interface IC for piezoelectric harvesting with 40nA quiescent current and zero-bias active rectifiers

Today´s relentless demand for autonomous smart sensor systems drives an intensive use of ultra-low power circuit techniques. Smart sensor systems composed of an energy harvester, sensors, an energy storage system and wireless transceivers require an efficient interface circuit for voltage regulation of varying voltage sources, such as piezoelectric energy (PE) harvesters. Existing implementations of PE interface circuits using rectifiers and supply voltage regulators [1-4], suffer from high energy losses especially when considering intermittent harvested powers. To address this challenge, we propose an integrated PE interface IC with an original zero bias rectifier circuit and an energy-aware supply regulator.