Simulation of an ultralow-power power management circuit for MEMS cantilever piezoelectric vibration energy harvesters

We developed a power management circuit for piezoelectric microelectromechanical system cantilever vibration energy harvesters (VEHs) with ultralow-power consumption. The power management circuit was effective in a wireless vibration monitoring system. To operate the system, ultralow-power electronics were required because only a small amount of electrical power was generated from the faint environmental vibration. Pb(Zr,Ti)O 3 (PZT) and aluminum nitride (AlN) VEHs were fabricated and their equivalent circuits were extracted from output voltage measurements. The power management circuit was simulated using the extracted circuits. The simulation suggested that the power management circuit can be driven by a vibration acceleration of 1.0 m/s 2 by lowering the power consumption of the power management circuit using existing electronics.