An innovative and efficient Energy Harvesting Platform architecture for autonomous microsystems

Extracting energy from the environment (e.g. from light, heat, vibrations or radiations) can be useful to enhance microsystems lifespan and even to reach energy autonomy. In this paper, we propose an innovative Energy Harvesting Platform (EHP) architecture which is used in the design of a multi-energy sources and multi-sensors microsystem suitable for Wireless Sensor Nodes (WSN) applications such as ambient intelligence or monitoring purposes. Through the use of an additional direct power path from sources to sensors and of a dedicated low power asynchronous controller, we provide adaptive and efficient power supply to the WSN. The proposed architecture is event-driven by detecting environmental energy events which are used to reconfigure the power path between sources and sensors. Compared to classical harvesting systems with a single power path through a battery, our solution allows up to 40% power efficiency gain.