Ultralow Power Voltage Supervisor for Ambient Power-Driven Microcontroller Systems

This paper presents a new approach of voltage supervisors for maintenance-free wireless sensor nodes and the smart dust powered by the energy harvesting. The new approach uses parasitic effects of low voltage metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistors (MOSFET). The working principle is proven and discussed using an equivalent circuit simulation. The proposed solution provides further advantages like requested shutdown and automatic wake-up from off-state without the need for sleep modes or real-time clocks with their related power consumption. The approach is compared qualitatively and quantitatively with state-of-the-art solutions in a controlled environment. The real world suitability is proven in an energy harvesting setup driven by an ultralow thermal energy input.