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221
Vsup Vsup Vsup Vsup
1:N 1:N
VINT
CINT
CINT
Native
NMOS Vsup
Native
NMOS Auxiliary
Figure 1: Schematic of Meissner oscillator Native Branch
NMOS
Depletion
ators and gate drives, the flyback converter is activated for PMOS
steady-state operation. An intermediate crude flyback stage
is also used to speed up the startup process. The operation
of the transformer-based Meissner oscillator and its deriva-
tive capable of operating from bipolar supply voltages are Figure 2: Schematic of modified Meissner oscillator for bipo-
described in detail below. lar operation
222
D2
SW
Vsup Vsup
figure 3. A switch connected to the primary side of the trans- 3.2 Intermediate Crude Flyback Converter
former stores energy in the transformer core in one phase of If the bipolar Meissner oscillator of section 2 were used
the driver clock cycle. The stored energy is transferred to to charge the large ( 5 F) output capacitor CSTOR , it
the output in the complementary phase by the secondary. would either cease to oscillate or slow down the startup pro-
Diodes D1 and D2 conduct when the supply is negative and cess considerably because of its limited current-driving ca-
positive respectively. pability. Instead, the oscillator is made to charge up a rela-
The converter operates in DCM using PFM control. The tively small capacitor CINT , which is isolated from CSTOR ,
low-power control circuits used for the main flyback con- to around 600 mV. The energy stored in CINT is used to
verter that monitor the output OV, UV etc. operate at 2 operate a ring oscillator that drives a small, low-Vth switch
kHz [7]. Based on the output resistance of the TEG being that drives the flyback converter and charges the output
used for an application, the on-time of the switch can be set capacitor CSTOR . The low-Vth crude-stage switch and nor-
to achieve near-MPPT condition. mal Vth main switch in figure 5 can be connected in par-
allel since flux-commutation ensures that the drain of the
3.1 Transformer Flux Commutation switches doesnt rise enough to damage the former. The
The transformers used for the targeted application [2] have main low-side switch that operates during steady-state is
large turns ratios and thus large primary winding capac- switched at the output voltage, which can be as high as 5.5
itances, as shown in table 1. Due to this large parasitic V, and achieves higher efficiency.
capacitance on the primary, the node Vpri in figure 3 can-
not rise a diode drop above VSTOR for diode D2 to turn 4. CONVERTER STARTUP AND STATE TRAN-
on when the supply is positive. Instead, when the switch
turns off under a positive supply the flux in the transformer SITIONS
core commutates as a result of the resonance between the
primary winding inductance and its associated parasitic ca- 4.1 Transformer Multiplexing
pacitance. Diode D1, being connected to the secondary, can The secondary coil of the transformer in the flyback con-
easily conduct once the flux in the core changes directions. verter of figure 5 is connected to the output through a diode
This is shown in figure 4. This also prevents the large volt- and a pass gate. The pass gate allows the path to CSTOR
age generated by the transformer on the Vsec node in the to be turned off when the bipolar Meissner oscillator is op-
case where D2 conducts in figure 3. Since diode D2 in fig- erating. The complete schematic of the oscillator is shown
ure 3 is not used for either polarity of the converter input in figure 5. The diode rectifier branch going to CINT goes
Vsup , it can be dropped from the circuit. through a depletion mode PMOS device which is only turned
In order to allow for the transformer flux to commutate off when the flyback converter is operating.
when Vsup is positive, the flyback converter switch needs to On the primary side, the native NMOS transistor from the
be turned off for sufficient time. Based on the secondary bipolar Meissner oscillator is connected in series to a deple-
winding inductance values in [2] and the capacitance values tion mode PMOS switch that turns off the branch when the
in table 1, the worst case oscillation period is 2.8 s for the flyback converter commences operation, as shown in figure 5.
223
Vsup Vsup Vsup
1:N
En
......... CSTOR
En2 D1
CSTOR
1:N
D1
SWcrd SWmain En2 En
(Low VT) En1
CINT
Vsup Cp Rleak
En1
Native
NMOS Auxiliary
Native Branch
NMOS Figure 8: Schematic of circuit used to store maximum value
Depletion
En1 PMOS of voltage on anode of diode D1. The circuit on the primary
side of the transformer is the same as in figure 5.
224
0.6 V 0.6 V
0V 0V CS POR
0.6 V 0.6 V Ring Osc
0V 0V Output
0.6 V
0.6 V VINT
0V 0V
3V 5V
VSTOR
0V 0V
400 s 75 s
(a) Vsup = 40 mV (b) Vsup = -40 mV
Figure 9: Simulated transient waveforms for startup with 1:100 transformer and bipolar harvester output voltages
0.7
0.7
0.6
0.6
0.5
0.5
Efficiency
Efficiency
0.4
0.4
0.3
0.3
VSTOR
=
3.6V
0.2
0.2
VSTOR
=
4.2V
0.1
0.1
VSTOR
=
5.5V
0
0
-300
-280
-260
-240
-220
-200
-180
-160
-140
-120
-100
-80
-60
-40
30
50
70
90
110
130
150
170
190
210
230
250
270
290
Figure 10: Flyback converter efficiency plots for different input voltages for N=100 transformer and a TEG with 5 output
resistance, at 70% input regulation and with different VSTOR values
age source in series with a source resistance varying from 1 The self-start voltage rises to 100 mV at 100 C and fast
to 5 , based on which the on-time of the low-side switch process corner.
in the flyback converter would be set to achieve near-MPPT In figure 9, the VSTOR node is charged up much faster in
condition. The transformer was modeled using measured the case where the input voltage is negative than when the
values for the primary and secondary coil inductance, par- input in positive. This is because the POR voltage on VINT
asitic series resisistance and shunt capacitance, and the in- where the bipolar Meissner oscillator turns off is set to be
tercoil coupling coefficient. attainable by the oscillator across corners. This gate-drive
Simulated waveforms for the converter startup at nominal level for the small switch on the primary side of the cride
process corner and 27 C are shown in figure 9 for N=100 and flyback converter is close to its Vth . The additional bias
input voltages of 40 mV. The VSTOR node drives the main on this switch along with the lower threshold voltage when
control circuits which are power-gated off until the main the input is negative increases the stored flux substantially,
POR triggers. In this simulation, the crude flyback con- which strengthens the forward turn-on of the diode D1 in
verter is allowed to operate beyond the main POR trigger figure 6 and increases the amount of energy flowing to VSTOR
threshold (1.8 V) on VSTOR to demonstrate its reliability in each iteration of the charge-discharge cycle of VINT .
in charging the node. As described in section 4.2, the con- Simulated efficiency plots for the flyback converter with
verter initially switches back and forth between the bipolar a 1:100 transformer and input voltage varying between 30
Meissner oscillator (ring oscillator, CS POR OFF) mode and mV and 100 mV are shown in figure 10 with the output
the crude flyback (ring oscillator, CS POR ON) mode. The voltage clamped at voltage levels typical for power manage-
zoomed portion of the waveform shows the value of VSTOR ment IC inputs. For positive input voltages (section 5), the
rising in small increments for each cycle the ring oscillator conversion efficiency drops sharply around 30 mV input be-
is on. Once the sub-regulator turns on, the voltage VSTOR cause the initial flux in the transformer core is insufficient
rises rapidly due to the positive feedback effect of VINT ris- to charge the parasitic capacitance on the secondary side
ing increasing the amount of charge transferred in each cycle. of the transformer to a diode drop above VSTOR and turn
on the high-side diode. The efficiency decreases for larger
225
Table 2: Comparison with state-of-the-art thermoelectric 8. REFERENCES
energy harvesters
[1] LTC3109 - Auto-Polarity, Ultralow Voltage Step-Up
Converter and Power Manager - Linear Technology.
Im et al.[6] LTC3109[1] This work [2] WE-EHPI Energy Harvesting Coupled Inductor -
Input Product Catalog Passive Components - Wurth
Unipolar Bipolar Bipolar
polarity Electronik.
Xformer [3] J. L. Bohorquez, M. Yip, A. P. Chandrakasan, and
1 2 1 J. L. Dawson. A biomedical sensor interface with a
count
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Vstartup 40 mV 30 mV 40 mV [4] J. Damaschke. Design of a low-input-voltage converter
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b c c
33(5):12031207, Sept. 1997.
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Vout 2V 2.35 - 5 V 1.8 - 5.5 V Integrated capacitive power-management circuit for
a thermal harvesters with output power 10 to 1000W.
Efficiency at Vsup = 200 mV and VSTOR = 5.5 V
In IEEE Int. Solid-State Circuits Conf. (ISSCC) Dig.
with a 1:50 transformer
b Tech. Papers, pages 300301, Feb. 2009.
At Vsup = 300 mV and Vout = 2 V
c
At Vsup = 100 mV and Vout = 3.3 V with 1:100 [6] J.-P. Im, S.-W. Wang, S.-T. Ryu, and G.-H. Cho. A
transformer 40 mV transformer-reuse self-startup boost converter
with MPPT control for thermoelectric energy
harvesting. IEEE J. Solid-State Circuits,
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occurs through voltage transformation when the primary- [7] K. Kadirvel, Y. K. Ramadass, U. Lyles, J. Carpenter,
side switch is on instead of flux commutation after the switch V. Ivanov, V. McNeil, A. P. Chandrakasan, and
turns off. As positive Vsup increases, the open circuit voltage B. Lum-Shue-Chan. A 330nA energy-harvesting
at the transformer secondary increases when the primary- charger with battery management for solar and
side switch is on. Since the output is clamped at a fixed thermoelectric energy harvesting. In IEEE Int.
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creasing dissipation in the transformer. Depending on the pages 106108, Feb. 2012.
input voltage range for the chosen application, a transformer [8] M. Kishi, H. Nemoto, T. Hamao, M. Yamamoto,
with smaller turns ratio may be chosen to achieve maximum S. Sudou, M. Mandai, and S. Yamamoto. Micro
efficiency at the desired value of Vsup . thermoelectric modules and their application to
The efficiency for negative input voltages (section 5) stays wristwatches as an energy source. In Proc. Intl. Conf.
fairly steady around the 60% mark. The conversion effi- on Thermoelectrics, pages 301307, 1999.
ciency for negative inputs also falls sharply around 30 mV [9] R. Min, M. Bhardwaj, E. Shih, A. Sinha, A. Wang,
in magnitude for reasons similar to the case where the in- and A. Chandrakasan. Low-power wireless sensor
put is a small positive value. Since the high-side diode is networks. In Intl. Conf. on VLSI Design, pages
reverse biased when the low-side switch of the flyback con- 205210, 2001.
verter is on irrespective of the input voltage, the efficiency [10] Y. K. Ramadass and A. P. Chandrakasan. A
does not drop as sharply as it does for positive input volt- battery-less thermoelectric energy harvesting interface
age. Instead the losses at larger input voltage magnitudes circuit with 35 mV startup voltage. IEEE J.
arise from increased on-resistance of the low-side switch due Solid-State Circuits, 46(1):333341, Jan. 2011.
to body-biasing of the transistor. A comparison with the [11] P. Spies, M. Pollak, and G. Rohmer. Energy
state-of-the-art is presented in table 2. harvesting for mobile communication devices. In Intl.
Telecomm. Energy Conf., pages 481488, 2007.
7. CONCLUSIONS [12] H.-Y. Tang, P.-S. Weng, P.-C. Ku, and L.-H. Lu. A
A system for converting the low-voltage output of ther- fully electrical startup batteryless boost converter
moelectric energy harvesters to higher voltages usable by with 50mV input voltage for thermoelectric energy
CMOS circuits has been presented. The converter achieves harvesting. In Dig. Symp. VLSI Circuits, pages
bipolar input voltage-operation with the use of a single trans- 196197, June 2012.
former. The transformer is multiplexed to allow for both [13] M. Yip, J. L. Bohorquez, and A. P. Chandrakasan. A
40 mV input cold-startup using a bipolar Meissner oscil- 0.6V 2.9W mixed-signal front-end for ECG
lator and steady state operation at 30 mV using a flux- monitoring. In Dig. Symp. VLSI Circuits, pages
commutating flyback topology. The flyback converter achieves 6667, June 2012.
60% steady-state conversion efficiency for bipolar input volt-
ages as low as 80 mV in magnitude with a 1:100 transformer
and 68% at 200 mV with a 1:50 transformer. To the best
of the authors knowledge, this is the first system capable
of low-voltage cold-startup and high-efficiency steady-state
conversion from bipolar input voltages using a single multi-
plexed transformer.
226