Rectified Output Power Analysis of Piezoelectric Energy Harvester Arrays under Noisy Excitation


Type
Conference Object
Change log
Authors
Jia, Y 
Arroyo, E 
Seshia, AA 
Abstract

In the past decade, vibration energy harvesting has emerged as a potential alternative solution to power wireless sensor nodes. In real-world implementations, external excitation can be very noisy and includes noise signals in a wide frequency band. In order to accommodate operation under noisy excitation, arrays of energy harvesters with different resonance frequencies are often employed to improve responsibility. Due to the nature of noisy excitation and the difference in resonance frequencies, the response voltage signals from each harvester can be very different in amplitude, frequency and phase. In this paper, an array with two cantilevered energy harvesters is studied to analyze the rectified output power with different configurations using full-bridge rectifiers (FBR). The experiments show that connecting the two harvesters in parallel or in series before connecting with a FBR results in significant voltage cancellation due to phase mismatch. The most efficient way to extract energy is to use two FBRs for the two cantilevered energy harvesters, individually, and charge to one single storage capacitor connected at the outputs of the two FBRs.

Description
Keywords
51 Physical Sciences, 7 Affordable and Clean Energy
Journal Title
Journal of Physics: Conference Series
Conference Name
17th International Conference on Micro and Nanotechnology for Power Generation and Energy Conversion Applications (PowerMEMS 2017)
Journal ISSN
1742-6588
1742-6596
Volume Title
1052
Publisher
IOP Publishing
Sponsorship
Technology Strategy Board (102152)
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/K000314/1)
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/L010917/1)