C8.4 - Dual-DC/DC Strategy for Enhanced Efficiency in Solar Powered Energy Harvesting

Event
AMA Conferences 2013
2013-05-14 - 2013-05-16
Nürnberg
Band
Proceedings SENSOR 2013
Chapter
C8 - Energy Harvesting
Author(s)
C. Viehweger, T. Pfeifer, T. Keutel, O. Kanoun - Technische Universität Chemnitz (Germany)
Pages
486 - 488
DOI
10.5162/sensor2013/C8.4
ISBN
978-3-9813484-3-9
Price
free

Abstract

Powering autonomous sensor systems with ambient energy sources, called energy harvesting, has become an interesting field of research the last years. Solar based solutions belong to the most developed so far. In electronic systems the voltage of the solar cell must be regulated to match the supplied device, typically 3.3 V or 5 V. It is also necessary to buffer energy to handle peaks in the current demand. These tasks can be fulfilled by different DC/DC converters, which normally have either a low startup voltage or a high efficiency. The work presented here describes the use of two complementary converters which make use of both characteristics to reach a low power operation also in difficult situations.

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