Design and Development of a Self-Powered Wireless Wearable Activity Tracker

Abstract

Human motion has gained a significant interest as a source of energy harvesting for wearable electronics. This paper proposes a low power management circuit for an electromagnetic energy harvester that utilizes human motion to power a wearable activity tracker. The power management circuit is based on Villard cascade circuit, a low power high efficiency DC/DC converter. It supplies power to a wireless transceiver serving as the activity tracking metric. Simulations and experimental validation of the proposed power management circuit are presented. The circuit successfully achieved an output voltage of 3.3V from the human motion, powering up a low-power wireless transceiver and hence constitutes a self-powered human activity tracker.