Active AC/DC control for wideband piezoelectric energy harvesting

Abstract

This paper proposes a simple interface circuit enabling resonant frequency tuning of highly coupled piezoelectric harvesters. This work relies on an active AC/DC architecture that introduces a tunable short-circuit sequence in order to control the phase between the piezoelectric current and voltage, allowing the emulation of a capacitive load. It is notably shown that this short-circuit time increases the harvested power when the piezoelectric operates outside of resonance. Measurements on a piezoelectric harvester exhibiting a large global coupling coefficient (k2 = 15.3%) have been realized and have proven the efficiency and potential of this technique.