Design of a Low-Voltage DC-DC Boost Converter Using an Enhanced Swing Colpitts Oscillator for Energy Harvesting

An mESCO (more Enhanced-Swing Colpitts Oscillator) combined with a rectifier-an LC oscillating DCDC converter referred to as mER in this paper-has been studied for energy harvesting using a circuit simulator. However, it has not yet been implemented as an integrated circuit to validate the concept on silicon. In this paper, the common-gate voltage gain of the mESCO is modeled to help designers determine the design parameters needed to achieve a large drain voltage amplitude. Then, an mER is designed and fabricated using a 250 nm 5 V CMOS process based on the circuit specifications determined to demonstrate the functionality of the mER. In the designed circuit, an output voltage of 1.15 V was measured at an input voltage of 0.5 V, confirming that the boost ratio can exceed two. The measured output voltage closely matched the SPICE simulation results. This is the first time a voltage boost has been experimentally confirmed using the designed mESCO circuit. Additionally, a regulator for the mER is proposed to stabilize the output voltage at a target level.