Analysis and design of a low power electronics circuit for energy harvesting applications

This paper presents the design of a low power electronics circuit for energy harvesting applications. The circuit consists of a full-bridge rectifier, a MOSFET switch, a rechargeable battery as the storage element, and a peak detector to provide power supply for the low power consumption MOSFET gate drive circuit. Thus, the proposed circuit is self-powered and can work without any external power supply. By utilizing an averaging scheme, it is shown that the energy harvesting circuit exhibits a pseudo-resistive behavior from the input. An analytical expression for the input resistance of the converter is derived and verified using simulation studies. This resistive characteristic of the converter is useful in applications involving maximum power transfer where resistive matching with the source of power is desirable. Simulation studies are conducted to verify the performance of the circuit in terms of resistive behavior and maximum power transfer.