ABSTRACT
Vibrations are a ubiquitous ambient source employed in energy
harvesting systems. Piezoelectric, electrostatic, and electrodynamic
transducers provide AC power from ambient vibrations. Thus, AC-
DC converters are necessary in order to convert their AC power into
the DC power that is required by the load of the energy harvesting
system. The AC-DC converter employed for those transducers is
normally a two-stage power converter consisting of the following:
• AC-DC rectifier. The rectification is usually done with a full-wave or half-wave rectifier using diodes. Another
solution consists of using voltage multipliers for the case
of electrodynamic transducers to increase the low-output
voltages and rectify them at the same time. Current
multipliers are employed in piezoelectric transducers for
increasing the low output currents and rectifying the output
power.
