An Energy Combiner for Multi-Source Energy Harvesting with Charge Control

Presented in this paper is an energy combiner for multi-source energy harvesting implemented with charge control. The energy combiner circuit uses a voltage level detection technique with a control algorithm in combining the input energy sources and stores it in a storage battery. A charge control is implemented to prolong the life of the storage battery by limiting the minimum and maximum charge of the battery. The energy combiner achieves a combining efficiency of 94.67%, 83.11%, and 82.91% in 3 cases (a) only 1 source, (b) 2 sources and (c) 3 sources energy available, respectively. With a total power consumption of 160μW. The design was implemented in 65nm technology using Synopsys Custom Designer with an area of 160.155μm × 177.940μm.