Maximum Power Point Tracking Circuit for an Energy Harvester in 130 nm CMOS Technology

TL;DR

This paper introduces a practical MPPT circuit for energy harvesters in 130nm CMOS, utilizing an improved Perturb and Observe algorithm with variable step size and power management for efficient energy transfer.

Contribution

It presents a novel MPPT circuit design with enhanced tracking speed and power efficiency, implemented in 130nm CMOS technology, including detailed RTL code and synthesis results.

Findings

Enhanced tracking speed with variable step size

Reduced power consumption of the MPPT circuit

Successful implementation in 130nm CMOS technology

Abstract

This paper presents design of a Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) circuit and its functionality for tuning the maximum power transfer from an energy harvester (EH) unit. Simple and practical Perturb and Observe algorithm is investigated and implemented. We describe the circuit functionality and the improvements that have been introduced to the original algorithm. The proposed MPPT design is divided into three main blocks. The output signal is being generated by the PWM or PFM block. The tracking speed has been enhanced by implementing a variable step size in the Tracking Block. Finally, the overall power consumption of the MPPT circuit itself is controlled by the Power Management Block, which manages delivering the clock signal to the rest of the circuit. The RTL code of the proposed MPPT has been described in Verilog, then has been synthesized and placed-and-routed in a general purpose 130nm CMOS technology.