Wearable sensors challenge low voltage design

The proliferation of wireless sensors will increase the demand for efficient power converters suitable for low voltage requirements of energy harvesting systems, such as wearable sensors, writes Tony Armstrong of Linear Technology

by Richard Wilson - Electronics Weekly, Sept. 23, 2015 – 

Energy harvesting technologies are looking particularly interesting when applied to wearable electronic devices.

Soon there will be wearable fabrics that can generate electricity from different forms of ambient energy that might only require a small primary battery as a back-up source.

These free energy sources include body temperature generation, photovoltaic sources such as indoor lighting or even just plain old daylight, as well as kinetic energy sourced from regular body movements.

A European Union-funded research project called Dephotex has developed methods to make photovoltaic material light (as in weight) and flexible enough to be worn.

Naturally, the material will convert photons into electrical energy, which in-turn can be used to power various electronic devices worn by the user, or to charge their primary batteries, or even a combination of both.

At the low end of the power spectrum there are nanopower conversion requirements for energy harvesting systems which require power conversion ICs that deal in very low levels of power and current. These can be tens of microwatts and nanoamps of current, respectively.

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