Experimental Investigation of a Power Management Chip Applied in Wireless Sensor Devices

This paper mainly presented a power management chip named LTC3588-1, which is a complete self-powered solution optimized for high output impedance energy sources. The wide hysteresis voltage comparator and the high efficiency buck converter of the chip are very suitable for powering autonomous devices. In order to evaluate the practical operating efficiency of the voltage regulator integrated in the chip, a power testing system based on general instruments is specially developed, as well as the self-discharge model of the energy storage element based on super capacitors. The experimental results show that the voltage conversion efficiency can be enormously improved through increasing the inductance of the inductor connected from the buck switching regulator to the following powered electronic load, the practical average value of the operating efficiency is about 80% after optimizing this inductance parameter. Moreover, the maximum measured efficiency can reach as high as 99% under the given conditions. The measured results can help us to develop and optimize the future self-powered wireless sensor devices.