Circuit design techniques for increasing the output power of switched capacitor charge pumps

摘要

This paper presents new circuit techniques for enhancing the charge pump output power, thus increasing the power efficiency. These techniques can be applied for solar energy harvesting applications targeting Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN). Charge pump is a type of DC-DC converters that can boost the input voltage. It has the advantage of using on-chip transistors and capacitors only that can be suitable for low cost integration. The proposed technique is based on the basic linear charge pump and helps in increasing the power capability of the charge pump through decreasing the MOSFET ON resistance and increasing the knee frequency. Simulation results show that the new technique increases the output power by 15.4 % more than the basic linear topology.