Supercapacitor Active Balancing and Control Circuit for Harvesting Energy from Vehicle's Tire

Due to the growth of technology, the use of energy extraction techniques has replaced the use of batteries in various applications. One of these energy sources is mechanical energy generated due to the movement of the vehicle tire and its pressure. In order to take an effective use of this harvested energy, it must be stored in storage cells such as supercapacitors (SCs). In most applications a couple of these SCs are needed, and accordingly the hiring of so called balancing circuits is inevitable. In this paper, a unique energy harvesting system (EHS) suitable for extracting the pressure of a vehicle's tire is proposed. This is accomplished by utilizing a piezoelectric cell, together with its accompanying circuits. In addition, a novel balancing circuit composed of Schmitt trigger and level shifter as the control circuit, and network of Zener diode and a switch across the SC is proposed which allows the use of multiple SCS. This harvesting system is implemented, and based on the results it is capable of extracting the pressure energy of vehicle's tire, offering about 10.34V as the output of the proposed EHS.