• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2018.10a
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• pp.31-34
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• 2018

This paper presents a low-power buck-boost converter for multi-input energy harvesting systems. The designed circuit combines the energy harvested from three input channels in real time and stores it in a storage capacitor. The structure of the buck-boost converter is simplified by using one external inductor and applying time division technique using an arbiter. In addition, to improve the efficiency of the system, the controller circuits of the converter are designed so that current consumption is minimized. The proposed circuit is designed with $0.35{\mu}m$ CMOS process. Simulation results show that the designed circuit consumes up to 490nA of current when all three input channels are active, and the maximum power efficiency is 92%. The chip area of the designed circuit is $1310{\mu}m{\times}1100{\mu}m$.

• Journal of Satellite, Information and Communications
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.89-93
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• 2017

This paper introduces an energy harvesting system that generates energy by collecting multi-band RF signals using buck-boost DC-DC converter. In an environment where the resistance of load using the collected electric energy is constantly changing, a buck-boost DC-DC converter is used in which the input resistance of the DC-DC converter does not change even if the load resistance changes. Since the frequency band of the input RF signal varies, the rectifier is designed for each band so that multiple bands can be processed, and a matching circuit is added to each band in front of the rectifier. For a rectifier to collect very small RF signals, a circuit is designed so that a constant voltage is obtained according to a very small input signal by devising a method of continuously accumulating the voltages collected and generated in each band. It is confirmed that the output efficiency can reach up to 20% even for the RF signal having the input of -20 dBm.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2013.10a
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• pp.346-349
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• 2013

This paper describes a triple-input energy harvesting circuit using solar, vibration and thermoelectric energy with MPPT(Maximum Power Point Tracking) control. The designed circuit employs MPPT control to harvest maximum power available from a solar cell, PZT vibration element and thermoelectric generator. The harvested energies are simultaneously combined and stored in a storage capacitor, and then managed and transferred into a sensor node by PMU(Power Management Unit). MPPT controls are implemented using the linear relation between the open-circuit voltage of an energy transducer and its MPP(Maximum Power Point) voltage. The proposed circuit is designed in a CMOS 0.18um technology and its functionality has been verified through extensive simulations. The designed chip occupies $945{\mu}m{\times}995{\mu}m$.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.1889-1910
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• 2017

This paper investigates a protocol so-called Adaptive Harvest Then Transmit (AHTT) for wireless powered communication networks (WPCNs) in multiple-input single-output (MISO) downlink systems, which assists in transmitting signals from a multi-antenna transmitter to a single-antenna receiver. Particularly, the power constrained relay is supplied with power by utilizing radio frequency (RF) signals from the source. In order to take advantage of multiple antennas, two different linear processing schemes, including Maximum Ratio Combining (MRC) and Selection Combination (SC) are studied. The system outage capacity and ergodic capacity are evaluated for performance analysis. Furthermore, the optimal power allocation is also considered. Our numerical and simulation results prove that the implementation of multiple antennas helps boost the energy harvesting capability. Therefore, this paper puts forward a new way to the energy efficiency (EE) enhancement, which contributes to better system performance.

• Journal of Communications and Networks
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.173-181
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• 2016

In this paper, we address a new robust optimization problem in a multiuser multiple-input single-output broadcasting system with simultaneous wireless information and power transmission, where a multi-antenna base station (BS) sends energy and information simultaneously to multiple users equipped with a single antenna. Assuming that perfect channel-state information (CSI) for all channels is not available at the BS, the uncertainty of the CSI is modeled by an Euclidean ball-shaped uncertainty set. To optimally design transmit beamforming weights and receive power splitting, an average total transmit power minimization problem is investigated subject to the individual harvested power constraint and the received signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio constraint at each user. Due to the channel uncertainty, the original problem becomes a homogeneous quadratically constrained quadratic problem, which is NP-hard. The original design problem is reformulated to a relaxed semidefinite program, and then two different approaches based on convex programming are proposed, which can be solved efficiently by the interior point algorithm. Numerical results are provided to validate the robustness of the proposed algorithms.