Accelerate Electret-Based Energy Harvesters Development with Precision Low-Level Dynamic Current Evaluation

Accelerate Electret-Based Energy Harvesters Development with Precision Low-Level Dynamic Current Evaluation

Product Fact Sheets

Development of Electret-Based Energy Harvesting Devices (Energy Harvesters) Is in Demand

 

• Energy harvesting system market is expanding rapidly with the acceleration of IoT technologies.

• The electret-based energy harvester is expected to be broadly used in sensor network systems since its simple structure can be easily miniaturized.

 

Characteristics of Electret-Based Energy Harvesters

 

• Can maintain charges or polarization stably for long-duration and generate energy from minute vibrations.

• Its impedance is large, typically MΩ or more range.

-       Typical voltage probing method cannot evaluate the vibration power generation characteristics accurately since its input impedance is lower than the energy harvesters, that affects the energy harvester’s circuit.

• The generated energy caused by the vibrations is in the range of several tens to several hundreds μW. The resultant current typically fluctuates at a very small nA range.

-       Low-level dynamic current measurement approach is required to evaluate the vibration power generation characteristics.

 

Challenges of Electret-Based Energy Harvesters Development 

 

Challenges

Requirements

Issues using conventional instruments

Power consumption levels are very low since the size reduction of the device leads to lower power generation levels.

• Accurate low-level dynamic current characterization down to nA to precisely evaluate the electret power generator performance.

•    Oscilloscope with I/V amplifier cannot measure low current at nA level due to large noise and low resolution.

•    Digital multimeter (DMM) cannot measure the dynamic current waveform precisely due to limited bandwidth and sampling rate.

Assure high-reliability without anomalies for longduration operation since the energy harvester is expected to be used maintenance-free once installed.

• Long-duration high sampling measurement without interruptions to capture rare anomalies that can cause device malfunctions such as spike noise.

• Oscilloscope, DMM, and data logger can miss rare anomalies due to the limitations of memory depth, bandwidth, or sampling rate.

Shorten time-to-market of the device yet ensure it achieves both low-power consumption and highreliability to early establish competitive advantage in the expanding market early.

• Powerful data analysis functions to accelerate debugging. ° Quick and easy identification of intermittent anomalies from extensive data collection. ° Long-duration trend analysis of the amount of the electric power generated by vibration.

• Design validation and debugging are time-consuming. ° Waveform data analysis functions of Oscilloscope, DMM, and data logger are very limited or none.

° Manual identification and analyzing rare anomalies from extensive data is almost impossible.

 

The CX3300 Series Waveform Analyzer Helps You with Electret-Based Energy Harvesters Development

 

You can easily measure low-level dynamic current precisely.

• CX3300A Series waveform analyzer has 200 MHz wide bandwidth, high-resolution / high-speed sampling at 16-bit (75 MSa/s) / 14-bit (1 GSa/s).

• CX1103A low-side current sensor provides low current sensitivity down to 150 pA and maximum 200 MHz wide bandwidth.

 

You can perform long-duration measurement with a high sampling rate that captures rare anomalies such as spike noise.

• The data logger mode measures up to 100 hours with a maximum of 10 MSa/s.

 

You can debug quickly by using waveform classification and detailed waveform analysis features.

• The Anomalous Waveform Analytics feature classifies large waveform data exceeding a terabyte to enable the identification of rare anomalies.

• The trend analyzer feature takes an in-depth look into the inflection nt from the entire waveform's visualized statistical trend.