A Battery-Free 217 nW Static Control Power Buck Converter for Wireless RF Energy Harvesting With $\alpha $-Calibrated Dynamic On/Off Time and Adaptive Phase Lead Control

Abstract

A battery-free nano-power buck converter with a proposed dynamic on/off time (DOOT) control can achieve high conversion efficiency over a wide load range. The DOOT control can predict the on/off time at different input voltages without a power consuming zero current detection (ZCD) circuit, as well as suppress static power in idle periods. To adapt to the fluctuations in a harvesting system, the proposed α-calibration scheme guarantees accurate ZCD over process, voltage variation, and temperature (PVT) in the DOOT to improve power conversion efficiency. Furthermore, the adaptive phase lead (APL) mechanism can improve inherent propagation delay attributable to low-power and non-ideal comparator, thus improving load regulation by a maximum of 30 mV. The test chip was implemented in 0.25-μm CMOS process with a die area of 0.39 mm <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> . Experimental results showed 95% peak efficiency, low static power of 217 nW and good load regulation of 0.1 mV/mA, which are suitable for RF energy harvesting applications.