RT Journal Article
T1 On-Chip Solar Energy Harvester and PMU With Cold Start-Up and Regulated Output Voltage for Biomedical Applications
A1 Cabello Ferrer, Diego
A1 Ferro Santiago, Esteban
A1 Pereira Rial, Óscar
A1 Martínez Vázquez, Beatriz
A1 Brea Sánchez, Víctor Manuel
A1 Carrillo, Juan M.
K1 Implantable devices
K1 LDO
K1 MPPT
K1 On-chip energy harvesting
K1 PMU
K1 Voltage reference generator
AB This paper presents experimental results from a system that comprises a fully autonomous energy harvester with a solar cell of 1 mm 2 as energy transducer and a Power Management Unit (PMU) on the same silicon substrate, and an output voltage regulator. Both chips are implemented in standard 0.18 μm CMOS technology with total layout areas of 1.575 mm 2 and 0.0126 mm 2 , respectively. The system also contains an off-the-shelf 3.2 mm × 2.5 mm × 0.9 mm supercapacitor working as an off-chip battery or energy reservoir between the PMU and the voltage regulator. Experimental results show that the fast energy recovery of the on-chip solar cell and PMU permits the system to replenish the supercapacitor with enough charge as to sustain Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) communications even with input light powers of 510 nW. The whole system is able to self-start-up without external mechanisms at 340 nW. This work is the first step towards a self-supplied sensor node with processing and communication capabilities. The small form factor and ultra-low power consumption of the system components is in compliance with biomedical applications requirements
PB IEEE
SN 1549-8328
YR 2020
FD 2020
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10347/24658
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10347/24658
LA eng
NO This work was supported in part by the Spanish Government (Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades) under Project RTI2018-097088-B-C32 and Project RTI2018-095994-B-I00 (MICINN/FEDER), in part by the Xunta de Galicia, in part by the Consellería de Cultura, Educación e Ordenación Universitaria (accreditation 2016-2019, ED431G/08 and reference competitive group 2017-2020, ED431C 2017/69) and European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), and in part by the Junta de Extremadura and the ERDF, under Grant IB 18079
DS Minerva
RD 3 may 2026