A 180 nm self-powered rectifier circuit for electromagnetic energy harvesters

This paper presents a new self-powered low voltage rectifier implementation for vibration-based electromagnetic (EM) energy harvesters. The proposed circuit is an improved version of the previously reported rectifier, which was designed in TSMC 90 nm CMOS technology. The circuit is designed in lower cost UMC 180 nm CMOS technology, and uses a passive AC/DC quadrupler structure to supply the external power of the utilized active components. Simulation results show that the maximum power conversion efficiency of the circuit is 94% with 500 mV input peak voltage and 8 kΩ load resistance. Lower than 4 mV voltage drop is achieved for input peak voltage above 200 mV at open-load condition. The circuit is able to operate with low frequency input signals, which are commonly available from electromagnetic vibration energy harvesters.