A kinetic energy harvester with fast start-up for wearable body-monitoring sensors

Abstract

A kinetic energy harvester for wearable wireless sensors and personal devices is proposed. The harvester is based on electromagnetic transduction of human movements and on a charge pump with smart switching to minimize the startup time from the fully depleted state. A detailed analysis and design optimization in the frequency range typical of human motion is also presented. Experimental results confirm that the proposed approach sharply reduces the start-up time and can exploit efficiently even small movements.