Piezoelectric-electromagnetic collaborative energy extraction circuit for wearable vibration energy harvester

Abstract

A piezoelectric-electromagnetic collaborative energy extraction circuit (PEC-EC) is presented in this paper to extract low-frequency vibration energy from arm swinging for wearable devices. This circuit simultaneously harvests energy from both the piezoelectric transducer (PZT) and electromagnetic coil generator (ECG). When the piezoelectric output voltage reaches its peak, the peak detection circuit becomes conductive, and the energy of the piezoelectric material is extracted at this moment. At the same time, the PEC-EC circuit can also harvest electromagnetic energy. Especially, even at low electromagnetic voltage input, the electromagnetic voltage can be extracted through the designed switch. The experimental results show that the circuit starts up only when the input voltage reaches 0.5V. The electromagnetic energy conversion efficiency can reach 53 %, and the piezoelectric energy conversion efficiency can reach 56 %. The effectiveness of collaborative extraction was also verified through experimental validation.