Power management circuit for energy harvesting applications with zero-power charging phase

Energy harvesting systems are becoming an exciting alternative for powering low-power electronics. For applications where real time response is not mandatory, energy harvesting systems can also be used with electronic devices whose power demand exceeds available power. Hence, it operates in two phases: charging and discharging phase. For switching between these two operating phases a power management circuit is used. This paper proposes power management circuit with zero power consumption during charging phase. The proposed design of a power management circuit is evaluated through measurements on a developed prototype. Compared to other power management circuit designs, switching time of the proposed design is up to 30 times faster, debounce-like behavior during switching is eliminated, it supports wider range of output currents and has a lower level-of-complexity.