A Wide Input Power Line Energy Harvesting Circuit for Wireless Sensor Nodes

The proposed circuit aims to harvest energy from AC powerlines with a wide current ranging from 10 to 50 A. The proposed system includes a wake-up circuit and is capable of cold-start. A buck-boost converter operating in DCM is adopted for impedance matching, where the impedance is rather independent of the operation conditions. So, the proposed system can be applicable to various types of wireless sensor nodes with different internal impedances. Experimental results show that the proposed system achieves an efficiency of 80.6% under the powerline current of 50 A.