Low-Power Voltage Converter Using Energy Recycling Capacitor Array

This paper presents a low-power voltage converter based on a reconfigurable capacitor array. Its energy recycling capacitor array stores the energy during a charge stage and supplies the voltage during an energy recycle stage even after the power source is disconnected. The converter reconfigures the capacitor array step-wise to boost the lost voltage level during the energy recycle stage. Its energy saving is particularly effective when most of the energy remaining in the charge capacitors is wasted by the leakage current during a longer sleep period. Simulations have been conducted using a voltage source of 500 mV to supply a $V_{DD}$ of around 800 mV to a load circuit consisting of four 32-bit adders in a 65-nm CMOS process. Results demonstrate energy recycling efficiency of 85.86% and overall energy saving of 40.14% compared to a conventional converter, when the load circuit is shortly active followed by a long sleep period.