Wearable sensor nodes use the ultra-low power consumption BLE (Bluetooth Low

Energy), they still need to be charged frequently. Efficient battery power for wearable
sensor nodes is now the biggest challenge for producers to solve.

Energy Harvesting

Energy harvesting is the process of taking energy from external sources and
converting these energies to electrical energy. External energy sources include kinetic
(locomotion, vibration, rotation), solar cell (light), thermal, piezoelectric (using excess
energy derived from motion) and even radio waves. We already featured an article
about energy harvesting

Power management ICs (PMICs) are being designed for harvesting energy, and a number of
low-power MCUs that can operate at these

Harvesting energy is the process of capturing and converting small amounts of non-
conventional power readily available within the environment, into electrical energy. This
energy can be used directly or stored for future use.

Energy can be harvested from radio energy (RF sources), captured from vibration, pressure
by piezoelectric elements, or from light through photovoltaic cells. The energy generated is
converted to electricity and stored in a durable storage cell like a capacitor. The energy
harvesting system generally includes circuitry to produce or capture energy, and a storage
device with some adjunct circuitry for power management and protection.

A buck converter is a DC - DC converter in which the output voltage is always lower or same
as the input voltage.

Working Principle of a buck converter

When the MOSFET is ON

When the MOSFET is ON, current flows through the inductor (L) , load (R) and the
output capacitor (C ) as shown in the fig-2. In this condition the diode is reverse
biased.So no current flows through it. During the ON state magnetic energy is stored in
the inductor and electrical energy is stored in the output capacitor.

When the MOSFET is OFF

When the MOSFET is off, stored Energy in the Inductor is collapsed and current
complete its path through the diode ( forward biased) as shown in fig-3.When stored
energy in the inductor vanishes, stored energy in the capacitor is supplied to load to
maintain the current.
What is Synchronous Buck Converter ?

In the above topology the diode used have considerable amount of voltage drop which
reduced the efficiency of the Converter.To improve the efficiency a Power electronics
switch is used in its place.Thus a synchronous buck converter is a modified version of
the basic buck converter circuit topology in which the diode, D, is replaced by a
electronics switch like MOSFET( Q2). It is shown in fig-4.