Circuit topology for piezoelectric transducers in a piezoelectric energy harvester

Abstract

In order to maximise the power from a harvester including a great number of piezoelectric transducers (PZTs), the outputs of these transducers should be connected in a suitable way. Since each PZT can be thought of as a non-ideal source, it is also clear that direct serial connection or parallel connection of these PZTs will not be a very good strategy. In this study, a new circuit topology is proposed for the electric connection between PZTs in a harvester including a great number of PZTs. This proposed circuit topology at the same time presents an efficient rectification and regulation strategy for each PZT used. The process of rectification takes place with minimum voltage loss due to the structure of the proposed circuit topology. In addition, the output of the proposed circuit topology can be used directly to charge an energy storage unit in addition to being connected to the input of any interface circuit. An experimental setup was designed to compare the performance of circuit topology proposed in this study in the form of connection used commonly in the literature. With this experimental setup used, various connection forms and the proposed circuit topology were compared under the same conditions.