ECE Assistant Professor Shrivastava Awarded Patent
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ECE Assistant Professor Aatmesh Shrivastava awarded a patent for “Low input voltage boost converter with peak inductor current control and offset compensated zero detection.”
Abstract Source: USPTO
The low input voltage boost converter with peak inductor current control and offset compensated zero detection provide a boost converter scheme to harvest energy from sources with small output voltages. Some embodiments described herein includes a thermoelectric boost converter that combines an I.sub.PEAK control scheme with offset compensation and duty cycled comparators to enable energy harvesting from TEG inputs as low as 5 mV to 10 mV, and the peak inductor current is independent to first order of the input voltage and output voltage. A control circuit can be configured to sample the input voltage (V.sub.IN) and then generate a pulse with a duration inversely proportional to V.sub.IN so as to control the boost converter switches such that a substantially constant peak inductor current is generated.