Design of an Integrated Thermoelectric Generator Power Converter for Ultra-Low Power and Low Voltage Body Energy Harvesters aimed at EEG/ECG Active Electrodes

This paper describes a design procedure for an efficient body thermal energy harvesting integrated power converter. This procedure is based on loss examination for a self-powered medical device. All optimum system parameters are calculated respecting the transducer constraints and the application form factor. It is found that it is possible to optimize converter’s working frequency with proper design of its pulse generator circuit. At selected frequency, it has been demonstrated that wide area voltage doubler can be eliminated at the expense of wider switches. With this method, more than 60% efficiency is achieved in simulation for just 20mV transducer output voltage and 30% of entire chip area is saved.