Capacitive power management circuit for micropower thermoelectric generators with a 1.4 μ A controller

Power autonomy is an important requirement for wireless sensor nodes. Thermoelectric generators can produce sufficient power for low power applications. Due to varying temperature, a power management circuit will be required. This paper presents such a power management circuit, realized in the AMIS I3T80 CMOS technology. It contains a Dickson charge pump with a variable number of stages as a DC/DC converter. A controller optimizes the number of stages of the charge pump, consuming 1.4μA. The maximum efficiency of the charge pump is 82%, leading to a total efficiency that can reach up to 58%.