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http://dx.doi.org/10.7471/ikeee.2018.22.3.842

Low-Power Operation Method of Thermal-Energy Harvesting Sensor Circuit  

Nam, Hyun Kyung (Dept. of Electronics Engineering, Kookmin University)
Pham, Van Khoa (Dept. of Electronics Engineering, Kookmin University)
Tran, Bao Son (Dept. of Electronics Engineering, Kookmin University)
Nguyen, Van Tien (Dept. of Electronics Engineering, Kookmin University)
Min, Kyeong-Sik (Dept. of Electronics Engineering, Kookmin University)
Publication Information
Journal of IKEEE / v.22, no.3, 2018 , pp. 842-845 More about this Journal
Abstract
In this paper, we propose low-power operational methods for thermal-energy-harvesting sensor circuits. Here, the amount of harvested current has been measured as low as 8uA. However the DC power consumption of the sensor circuit is known to consume much larger than 8uA. Thus, We propose the hardware-based power gating and software-based active/sleep timing control schemes, respectively, for controlling the power consumption of sensor circuit. In the hardware-based power gating scheme, if the ratio of Toff/Ton is larger than 22, the sensor can consume less than 8uA. For the software-based active/sleep control scheme, if the ratio of Tslp/Tact is larger than 3, we can suppress the current consumption below 8uA. The hardware-based and software-based schemes proposed in this paper would be helpful in various applications of energy-harvesting sensor circuits, where the power consumption is limited by an amount of harvested energy.
Keywords
thermoelectric generator; low-power sensor operation method; thermoelectric energy harvesting; power-gating circuit; active/sleep mode;
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