Energy harvesting with dual buffer capacitor arrangement
AssigneeEM Microelectronic-Marin SA
InventorKevin Scott BUESCHER
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A system (10) including an energy harvesting circuit (12) connectable to an antenna (14) and configured to execute an autonomous matching procedure to match the antenna (14) to an electric load (15), a buffer capacitor (16) connected to the energy harvesting circuit (14) and chargeable by the energy harvesting circuit (14), and a control circuit (20) connected to the energy harvesting circuit (14) and to the buffer capacitor (16) and connectable to the electric load (15), wherein the control circuit (20) is configured to control a supply voltage of the electric load (15), and wherein the control circuit (20) comprises an auxiliary capacitor (22) chargeable during execution of the autonomous matching procedure.
Claims15
A system (10) comprising:
- an energy harvesting circuit (12) connectable to an antenna (14) and configured to execute an autonomous matching procedure to match the antenna (14) to an electric load (15),
- a buffer capacitor (16) connected to the energy harvesting circuit (14) and chargeable by the energy harvesting circuit (14),
- a control circuit (20) connected to the energy harvesting circuit (14) and to the buffer capacitor (16) and connectable to the electric load (15), wherein the control circuit (20) is configured to control a supply voltage of the electric load (15), and
- wherein the control circuit (20) comprises an auxiliary capacitor (22) chargeable during execution of the autonomous matching procedure.
A method of charging capacitors (16, 22) of a system (10), wherein the system comprises:
- an energy harvesting circuit (12) connectable to an antenna (14) and configured to execute an autonomous matching procedure to match the antenna (14) to an electric load (15),
- a buffer capacitor (16) connected to the energy harvesting circuit (14),
- a control circuit (20) connected to the energy harvesting circuit (14),
- an auxiliary capacitor (22) connectable to the energy harvesting circuit (14), the method comprising the steps of:
- charging the buffer capacitor (16),
- executing the autonomous matching procedure, and
- charging the auxiliary capacitor (22) during execution of the autonomous matching procedure.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.