10 mV – 1V Step-up Converter for Energy Harvesting

Applications
Marcio Bender Machado1,2,3, Mohamad Sawan3, Marcio Cherem Schneider1, and Carlos Galup-
Montoro1
1
UFSC – Federal University of Santa Catarina, SC, Brazil
2
IF-Sul – Federal Institute Sul-Rio-Grandense, RS, Brazil
3
Polystim Neurotech Lab – Polytechnic School of Montreal, QC, Canada
[email protected]

ABSTRACT
This paper presents an ultra-low-voltage step-up converter for
energy harvesting applications, which is able to operate from
supply voltages below the thermal voltage kT/q. The operation of
the main blocks of the converter, namely an enhanced swing ring
oscillator and a Dickson charge pump, both operating at ultra-low
voltage, is described. The extremely low voltage operation, made
feasible through the arrangement presented, is demonstrated via a
Fig. 1. The conceptualization of an ULV step-up topology.
prototype built with off-the-shelf devices and zero-VT transistors
in a 130 nm CMOS technology. The prototype generates a DC
In this paper we present a step-up converter that operates down
output equal to 1V at current consumptions of 10 nA and 1 µA
to extremely low voltages. The converter topology is suitable for
from input voltages of 10 and 25 mV, respectively.
boosting power voltage levels of the order of some tens of mV to
Categories and Subject Descriptors the higher voltage levels (Vdd > 500 mV) required to supply current
B.7.0 [Integrated Circuits]: General – advanced. electronic circuitry. The conceptual scheme of the DC-DC
converter, shown in Fig. 1, is composed of an ultra-low-voltage
General Terms (ULV) oscillator that starts up from a DC voltage as low as 10 mV
Experimentation and theory. provided by the energy harvester and a boost topology. The peak
output voltage of the oscillator is higher than the DC input voltage,
Keywords but its value is not high enough to be rectified by a single stage to
Ultra-low-voltage circuits; ultra-low-voltage DC-DC converters; obtain Vdd > 500 mV.
energy harvesting; zero-VT MOSFET; Dickson charge pump; In general, in order to boost the low voltage levels of the
enhanced swing oscillator. oscillator signal, either inductive boost or charge pump circuits are
used. Although inductive circuits have been used for voltage
1. INTRODUCTION boosting, their design is extremely difficult in the case of ULV
applications due to the low ratio of the ON current to the OFF
The generation of energy from extremely low voltage sources, current for low values of peak-to-peak gate signals.
such as thermoelectric generators or glucose fuel cells operating On the other hand, voltage multipliers [5] and charge pumps can
outside or inside the human body [1], [2], is very attractive for start up from small amplitude signals; however, the voltage drop
powering circuits that monitor vital signals. In general, these across the diodes can be prohibitive, especially for a multiple-stage
sources generate DC voltages below 100 mV. Converting such a charge pump, which is required to elevate ULV references.
low voltage to a DC voltage in the range of 0.5-1.0 V, typically Therefore, in order to increase the oscillator output voltage and,
required to power current electronic circuitry, is not an easy task. consequently, to decrease the number of stages required for the
This is mainly because for supply voltages below 100 mV it is charge pump, we employed an enhanced swing ring oscillator [6]
extremely difficult to generate oscillatory signals and topology, which can boost the oscillator magnitude well beyond the
simultaneously deal with the losses caused by the boost stage. Some supply rails. In order to reduce the voltage drop across each stage of
researchers have addressed this issue by using mechanical switches the charge pump, we employed Schottky diodes rather than pn-
[2], post-layout tuned oscillators [3] or bulky transformers [4]. junction diodes.
However, a fully-electronic circuit starting up with voltages below The paper is organized as follows. In Sections 2 and 3 we present
the thermal voltage kT/q has yet to be presented. the analysis of both the ULV oscillator and the ULV Dickson
converter. The circuit set up together with the experimental results
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for is shown in Section 4. Section 5 presents a comparison with other
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are
recent studies and Section 6 provides a summary of the paper.
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. 2. ENHANCED SWING RING
Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to
post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission OSCILLATOR (ESRO)
and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].
SBCCI '14, September 01 - 05 2014, Aracaju, Brazil For energy harvesting applications, the oscillator that provides
Copyright 2014 ACM 978-1-4503-3156-2/14/09…$15.00. the AC signal for the boost converter must present two fundamental
http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2660540.2660993 characteristics: (i) generating oscillations even when powered with
very low supply voltages; and (ii) boosting the output magnitude as
much as possible in order to improve the overall converter
efficiency. The enhanced swing ring oscillator (ESRO) [6] complies
with both requirements.
The ESRO is a conventional cross-coupled oscillator that uses
an inductive coupling inductor (L2) between stages; it is able to
boost the oscillation amplitude far beyond the supply rails even
when operating with very low supply voltages. Moreover, the two
complementary signals required in the charge pump are naturally
obtained with a two-stage ESRO, as shown in Fig. 2, where the
charge pump converter (next stage of the topology) is represented as
a load indicated by a conductance GO.
The transfer function of a single stage of the ESRO, according
to the model shown in Fig. 3, is Fig. 2. Schematic diagram of the two-stage ESRO [6], with the load,
the Dickson converter described in this paper, modeled as a
conductance GO.
Vout gm
=−
Vin ⎛ 1 ⎞ (1)
⎜ g md + GP1 + ⎟ ⎡( sC + GO )( sL2 + RS 2 ) + 1⎦⎤ + sC + GO
⎝ sL1 ⎠ ⎣

or, equivalently

Vout − gm
=
Vin RS 2C ⎛ L ⎞
( g md + GP1 ) (1 − L2Cω 2
+ GO RS 2 + ) + GO ⎜1 + 2 ⎟
L1 ⎝ L1 ⎠ (2) (
1 Fig. 13. Simplified small-signal model of a single stage of the ESRO
x
⎛ ⎡( L1 + L2 ) C + L1 ( RS 2C + L2G0 )( g md + GP1 )⎤ ω 2 − G0 RS 2 − 1 ⎞ [6]. )
1+ j ⎜ ⎣ ⎦ ⎟
( )
⎜ ( g md + GP1 ) ω L1 1 − L2Cω 2 + RS 2GO + ( L1 + L2 ) GOω + RS 2Cω ⎟
⎝ ⎠
gms n ⎡ RS 2C ⎛ L ⎞⎤
gmd
> 1+
gmd ⎣
( 2
)
⎢( gmd + GP1 ) 1 − L2Cω + GO RS 2 +
L1
+ GO ⎜1 + 2 ⎟ ⎥
L1 ⎠ ⎦
(7)
where gm and gmd represent the MOSFET gate and drain ⎝
transconductances, respectively, C is the sum of all capacitances Finally, disregarding the inductor losses, assuming n=1 and
between the drain node and the ac ground, RS2 is the series substituting (5) into (7) we find the compact expression for the
resistance of inductor L2, Gp1 is the parallel conductance of L1, and minimum transistor gain from
Go models the output load. The phase shift φ between Vout and Vin
calculated from (2) is gms L2C G ⎛ L ⎞
> 2− + O ⎜1 + 2 ⎟ (8)
g md ( L1 + L2 ) C + L1L2G0 gmd gmd ⎝ L1 ⎠
⎛ ⎡( L1 + L2 ) C + L1 ( RS 2C + L2GO )( g md + GP1 )⎤ ω 2 − GO RS 2 − 1 ⎞
φ = π − tan −1 ⎜ ⎣ ⎦ ⎟ (3) The effect of the output conductance Go (which represents the
⎜ ( g md + GP1 ) ω L1 (1 − L2Cω 2 + RS 2GO ) + ( L1 + L2 ) GOω + RS 2Cω ⎟ load inserted by the stage following the oscillator) on both the
⎝ ⎠
oscillation frequency (equation (5)) and the minimum transistor
For the occurrence of oscillations, the phase shift of the single gain (equation (8)) is shown in Fig. 4. Despite the strong influence
stage shown in Fig. 2 is π [6]; thus, the oscillation frequency ω of GO on the minimum transistor gain required for oscillation, this
calculated from (3) is effect can be alleviated by increasing gmd through transistor
widening.
GO RS 2 + 1
ω= (4)
( L1 + L2 ) C + L1 ( RS 2C + L2GO )( g md + GP1 )
3. ANALYSIS OF THE ULV CHARGE
which reduces to PUMP
1 For ULV operation, the conventional approach involving a
ω= (5)
( L1 + L2 ) C + L1L2GO g md constant diode forward voltage drop for the model of the Dickson
charge pump [7] shown in Fig. 5 is not applicable. To analyze the
Dickson converter down to input voltages of the order of the
for negligible inductor losses. The greater-than-unity gain required thermal voltage kT/q or even less, we introduce a converter model
for the starting up of the oscillations is achieved for which includes both the load current and the more realistic
RS 2C ⎛ L ⎞ exponential current-voltage characteristic of the diode.
(
g m > ( g md + GP1 ) 1 − L2Cω 2 + GO RS 2 + ) L1
+ GO ⎜1 + 2 ⎟
L1 ⎠
(6) For the N-stage Dickson converter, assuming steady-state
⎝ operation as in [5], [8] and, for the sake of simplicity, a square
Since the relation between the source, drain and gate signal Vφ, the voltage waveform VD across each diode of the circuit
transconductances, gms, gmd, and gm, respectively, is gm=(gms-gmd)/n is shown in Fig. 5, where Vd is the diode forward voltage drop and
[10], where n is the transistor slope factor, the minimum transistor VP is the peak voltage of Vφ.
gain gms/gmd required for oscillation, obtained from (6), is
 40 1
gmd = 20 mA/V
gmd = 5 mA/V
gmd = 1 mA/V

/ 0
30 0,75
min
gms/gmd

0
20 0.5

/
(gms/gmd),min
10 0.25

0 0
−6 −5 −4 −3
10 10 10 10
Go [A/V]
Fig. 5. Dickson charge pump topology.
Fig. 4. Calculated oscillation frequency (equation (5)) normalized by
From (9) and (13), we can write the converter output as
ω = 1 ( L + L )C and minimal transistor gain (equation (8)) in
0 1 2
terms of the output conductance GO. L1=9.5 µH, L2=950 µH (both with
⎡ cosh (VP / nφt ) ⎤ ⎡ cosh ( 2VP / nφt ) ⎤
Q=80) and C = 3 pF. Vout = Vin + 2nφt ln ⎢ ⎥ + ( N − 2 ) nφt ln ⎢ ⎥ (14)
⎣ 1 + I L / I sat ⎦ ⎣ 1 + I L / I sat ⎦
As can be seen in Fig. 5, one of the terminals of both the leftmost
and rightmost diodes, D1 and DN, is connected to DC nodes (Vin and Now, assuming that the AC signal is a sinusoid instead of a
Vout, respectively). The voltage waveforms across them differ from square wave, the result in (14) can be written [5] as
those across the intermediate diodes. For this reason, the forward
voltage drop will be the same (Vd1=VdN) in the two cases. For the ⎡ I (V / nφt ) ⎤ ⎡ I 0 ( 2VP / nφt ) ⎤
other diodes, the forward voltage drop will be the same (Vd2=…= Vout = Vin + 2nφt ln ⎢ 0 P ⎥ + ( N − 2 ) nφt ln ⎢ ⎥ (15)
⎣ 1 + I / I ⎦ ⎣ 1 + I L / I sat ⎦
VdN-1). Thus, the DC output voltage of the converter is L sat

where I0 is the modified Bessel function of the first kind of order

Vout = Vin + (2 N − 2)VP − 2Vd 1 − ( N − 2)Vd 2 zero.
(9) )
The expression derived in (15) is an important tool for the design
where N is the number of diodes. In order to calculate the diode of charge pumps that operate from low voltages. From Fig. 6, which
forward voltage drop (Vd1 and Vd2) we will proceed as follows. As in represents equation (15), it is possible to define the number of
[5], we assume that the I-V characteristic of the diode follows the stages that matches the design specifications for Vout and IL/Isat. As
Shockley model, i.e. can be seen in the figure, the effect of the increment of the diode
I D = I sat e VD nφt
−1 ( )
(10) )
saturation current (that represents the decrement of IL/Isat), besides
increasing the output voltage, is essential for achieving a decrease in
where Isat is the saturation current and n is the diode ideality factor. the minimum operating voltage of the converter.
The average value of each diode current over a complete cycle of
the oscillating signal is equal to the load current, IL, i.e., 10
1

T /2 IL/Isat=0.1

IL = ∫ I D dt IL/Isat=1 N=7
(11) ) IL/Isat=10
−T /2
N=5
For the waveforms VD1 and VD2 (shown in Fig. 5), (10) results,
respectively, in
⎛ IL ⎞ 0
⎛ Vd 1 ⎞ T
⎛ Vd 1 − 2VP ⎞ N=3
Vout [V]

⎜1 + ⎟ T = ∫−T exp ⎜ ⎟ dt + ∫0 exp ⎜ ⎟ dt

2
φ ⎝ nφt ⎠
0

⎝ I sat ⎠ n
⎝ t⎠
10
2
(12)
⎛ IL ⎞ 0
⎛ Vd 2 ⎞ T
⎛ Vd 2 − 4VP ⎞
⎜1 + ⎟ T = ∫−T exp ⎜ ⎟ dt + ∫0 exp ⎜ ⎟ dt
2

⎝ I sat ⎠ ⎝ nφt ⎠ ⎝ nφt ⎠

2

Assuming that the capacitor values are sufficiently high to keep

the voltages at each node constant over a half-cycle, the forward
voltage drops Vd1 and Vd2 are −1
10
⎡ cosh (VP / nφt ) ⎤
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7
VP [V]
Vd 1 = VP − nφt ln ⎢ ⎥
⎣ 1 + I L / I sat ⎦ (13) Fig. 6. Calculated output voltage (from (15)) vs. peak voltage VP for
⎡ cosh ( 2VP / nφt ) ⎤ IL/Isat = 0.1, 1, and 10 and N = 3, 5 and 7. For the calculations in this
Vd 2 = 2VP − nφt ln ⎢ ⎥ figure, Vin = 10 mV, φ t=25.7 mV, and n = 1.
⎣ 1 + I L / I sat ⎦
4. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
In order to demonstrate the possibility of boosting voltages
below kT/q, we designed a step-up converter which is able to raise
the voltage level from 10 mV to 1V for a load current of 10 nA.
The schematic diagram of the two-stage ESRO connected to the
Dickson converter is shown in Fig. 7. Using zero-VT transistors of
the IBM 130 nm technology with W/L=1500µm/420nm for the
oscillator, off-the-shelf inductors and Schottky diodes, the circuit
can start up from Vdd = 4 mV, providing an output voltage of 250
mV. Considering the case in which the load current is 1 µA, the
output power capability to drive a load of 1µW is reached for Vin =
25 mV. The photograph of the prototype implemented with SMD
passives is shown in Fig. 8. A microphotograph of the oscillator
transistors, mounted on the board using a plastic QFN package, is
shown in the lower part of Fig. 8.
High-Q inductors (L1 and L2 in Fig. 7), were chosen in order to
boost the output oscillator voltage and, at the same time, to avoid
significant inductor loss. The inductor values characterized at 600
kHz were: L1=9.5 µH, quality factor, QL1≈80, and resonance Fig. 8. Photograph of the step-up converter prototype. The bottom
frequency, frL1≈150 MHz; L2=950 µH, QL2≈80, and frL2≈2.1 MHz. part shows the microphotograph of the zero-VT transistors
As a way to reduce the converter drop-out and to decrease the implemented in the 130 nm process.
minimum voltage for starting up the oscillator we built a three-
stage Dickson charge pump using commercial Schottky diodes 5. DISCUSSION
with Isat=90 nA and n=1. Schottky diodes were used due to their
In recent years some topologies and techniques have been
higher drive capability compared to standard pn-junction diodes
proposed in order to start up DC-DC converters with less than 100
whose saturation current is typically a few nA. Since the main role mV using, for example, mechanical switches [2], a post-fabrication
of the converter is to decrease as much as possible the minimum tuned oscillator [3], or an external transformer [4]. The minimum
operating voltage, we chose a small number of stages (in order to voltage required to start up the converters in [2], [3], [4] is around
reduce the diode losses), that is, the minimum sufficient to boost 35 mV, including the extra cost associated with the use of external
the output voltage to 1V. Thus, as Fig. 6 shows, for N = 3 and with devices, such as inductors and capacitors. On the other hand, some
values of Isat=90 nA and n=1 for the Schottky diode, the converter fully integrated topologies, such as that presented in [9], start up
output reaches 1V, for an oscillator amplitude of 300 mV, a value from voltages of at least 270 mV.
appropriate for the implemented oscillator, and a load current A comparison between previous state-of-the-art research and
IL/Isat=0.1, or equivalently IL=9 nA. our study with regards to the minimum start-up voltage and the
A comparison between the experimental output voltage obtained design characteristics is shown in Table I. As can be seen, our
with the prototype shown in Fig. 8 and that calculated from (15) is proposal allows a very important reduction in the minimum
illustrated in Fig. 9. For the calculation of Vout from (15), the value operational voltage of electronic step-up converters.
of VP was taken as the average value of the amplitudes of the two
oscillator outputs, since the oscillator presented slightly 800
unbalanced outputs, as shown in Fig. 10. 700
VP Oscillator
It is worth noting that in order to take the measurements shown 600
VP [mV]

in Fig. 9, each oscillator output was loaded by an oscilloscope 500

IL = 2.1 uA
probe with C=3.3 pF and R=10 MΩ. As can be seen in the figure, 400
the calculated values match very closely the experimental results. 300
IL = 110 nA IL = 1.1 uA
The waveforms at the converter output and at both phases of the 200 Experimental

oscillator are shown in Fig. 10 for Vdd = 11 mV and IL = 110 nA. 100
5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55

2.5 Vout Dickson converter

2
Vout [V]

IL = 2.1 uA
1.5

1
IL = 110 nA Experimental
IL = 1.1 uA
0.5 Calculated

5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55
VDD [mV]

Fig. 9. Oscillator peak voltage and converter output voltage vs. supply
Fig. 7. The step-up converter topology employed in this study. voltage. The experimental values were measured from the prototype
shown in Fig. 8 and the calculated Vout was obtained from (15).
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circuitry.

7. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors are grateful to the Brazilian government agencies
CAPES and CNPq for partially funding this study. MOSIS is
acknowledged for the fabrication of the transistors.

Table I. Comparison between different start-up converter topologies.

Min. Converter
Ref. Process Characteristics
start up topology
Mechanical switch and
[2] 35 mV Inductive boost 0.35 um
external inductor and capacitor
Post-layout threshold voltage
Dickson +
[3] 80 mV 65 nm adjustment + external inductor
inductive boost
and capacitor
[4] 40 mV Inductive boost 0.13 um External transformer
Switched
[9] 270 mV 0.13 um Fully integrated
capacitor
This
10 mV Dickson 0.13 um Off-the-shelf components
study