Compressive self-powering of piezo-floating-gate mechanical impact detectors

Pikul Sarkar, Shantanu Chakrabartty

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

10 Scopus citations

Abstract

This paper describes a novel compressive self-powering technique that significantly extends the powering and sensing range of our previously reported piezo-floating-gate (PFG) sensors for applications in mechanical impact monitoring. At the core of the proposed technique is a nonlinear impedance circuit that dynamically loads the output of a piezoelectric transducer in a manner such that the sensor can be self-powered at low-levels of mechanical strain and yet is able to sense and detect large variations in strain-levels. The compressive approach requires precise programming of event detection thresholds and requires precise nonvolatile event counting, both of which are achieved using variants of a linear floating-gate injector circuit. Measured results obtained from prototypes fabricated in a 0.5-μm standard CMOS process validate the proposed compressive powering and the proposed programming technique.

Original languageEnglish
Article number6582686
Pages (from-to)2311-2320
Number of pages10
JournalIEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I: Regular Papers
Volume60
Issue number9
DOIs
StatePublished - 2013

Keywords

  • Compressive powering
  • floating-gate transistor
  • mechanical impact detection
  • piezoelectricity
  • self-powered sensors
  • strain
  • structural health monitoring

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