Energy harvesting using piezoelectric materials: Case of random vibrations

A dramatic consumption reduction of integrated circuits related to the development of mobile electronic devices has been reached over the past years, enabling the use of ambient energy instead of batteries. The focus is here on the transformation of ambient mechanical vibrations into electrical energy. This paper compares the performances of a vibration-powered electrical generator using PZT piezoelectric ceramics associated to two different power conditioning circuits. A new approach of the piezoelectric power conversion based on a nonlinear voltage processing is presented and implemented using a particular circuit. Theoretical predictions and experimental results show that the new technique may increase the power harvested by a factor up to 4 compared to the Standard technique. The power optimization problem is in particular examined in the case of broadband, random vibrations.