A compressive piezoelectric front-end circuit for self-powered mechanical impact detectors

Linear self-powering using a piezoelectric transducer is not well suited for detecting high-velocity mechanical impacts where the level of strain inside the structure could vary by orders of magnitude. In this paper we present a novel compressive self-powering technique that uses a non-linear impedance circuit to dynamically load the output of a piezoelectric transducer and in the process reduce the magnitude of the output voltage at large levels of mechanical strain. Measured results obtained from prototypes fabricated in a 0.5-μm standard CMOS process validate the proposed compressive powering technique.