Proceedings of the SICE Annual Conference 2017

September 19-22, 2017, Kanazawa University, Kanazawa, Japan

Development of an energy harvesting circuit with photo MOSFET and

Arduino for linear electromagnetic transducers
Toru Ikegame1† and Kentaro Takagi2
1
Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering, Nagoya University, Aichi, Japan
(Tel: +81-52-789-2741; E-mail: toru.ikegame@nagoya-u.jp)
2
Department of Mechanical Systems Engineering, Nagoya University, Aichi, Japan
(Tel: +81-52-789-2741; E-mail: kentaro.takagi@nagoya-u.jp)

Abstract: An energy harvesting circuit with an isolated step-up chopper circuit and an Arduino is newly developed for
electromagnetic transducers including voice coil motors. The isolated step-up chopper circuit is implemented by a photo
MOSFET. The optimal duty ratio is computed by a DSP and the photo MOSFET is controlled by the Arduino. The
measured charged voltage shows an agreement with the prediction of the previously studied results.

Keywords: Energy harvesting, Electromagnetic transducer, Step-up converter, Pulse width modulation (PWM)

1. INTRODUCTION 2. CONTROL METHOD

Energy harvesting is the technique that converts small
mechanical energy, such as mechanical vibration, into
electrical energy. Electromagnetic transducers [1], piezo-
electric elements [2], or electrostatic actuators [3] are
used for energy harvesting. We focus on energy harvest-
ing using electromagnetic transducers such as voice coil
motors.
The conventional study [1] uses a step-up chopper cir-
cuit as energy harvesting circuit. In [1], to reduce the
resistance of the switch and to increase the capacity of
current, forty units of analog switches are connected in
parallel. However, the switch connected in parallel is
undesirable from the viewpoint of practical implementa-
tion and circuit scale. In Reference [4], n-MOSFET and
p-MOSFET are connected in series for an implementa-
tion of the switch, that can pass or block current in both
directions. However, leakage current may occur if the
input/output isolation of the MOSFET switch is insuffi-
Figure 1 shows the harvesting circuit including charg-
ing capacitor. The photo MOSFET in Fig. 1 has the role
of the switch of the step-up chopper. The reason for us-
ing photo MOSFET is to prevent the current flow from
the Arduino to the charging circuit. The harvested energy
is stored into the two electrolytic capacitors on the right
hand side in the figure. L0 is the inductance, R0 is the
resistance, and vin is the electromotive force of the elec-
tromagnetic transducer. The electromotive force, vin , is
represented as vin = φẋ, where ẋ is the velocity of the
electromagnetic transducer and φ is the electromechani-
cal coupling coefficient. The switch, for which the photo
MOSFET is used in the experiment, is controlled by
pulse width modulation (PWM). The current-maximizing
PWM ratio, βnopt , is given by the following equation [5].
⎧  
⎨ sat+ 1 − vin
 2(vB+ +vD )  if vin ≥ 0
βnopt = , (1)
⎩ sat+ 1 + vin
if v in < 0
2(−vB− +vD )

cient. If the isolation is not sufficient, the charged volt-
age may increase due to the leakage current even in the
absence of the electromotive force of the electromagnetic
transducer.
In this paper, an energy harvesting circuit with an iso-
lated step-up chopper circuit and an Arduino is newly
developed. This paper also shows an experimental ver-
ification of a control method [5] of the step-up chopper
circuit for electromagnetic energy harvesters. The veloc-
ity of the vibration of the transducer is measured and then
is feedback to control the switch of the step-up chopper
circuit. A photo MOSFET relay is used as the isolated
switch for the step-up circuit in this paper. This paper
also utilizes Arduino for controlling the switch. The va-
lidity of the combination of the photo MOSFET and Ar-
duino for the energy harvesting is demonstrated through
experiments.
† Toru Ikegame is the presenter of this paper.
978-4-907764-56-2 PR0001/17 ¥400 © 2017 SICE
where vB+ and vB− are the upper and lower voltages
of the charging electrolytic capacitors, vD is the forward
voltage drop of the diode, and sat+ denotes the saturation
function that limits the output to positive value from 0 to
1. The measured variable of the control law shown in [5]
is expressed by the current, but in this paper, the voltage
is used in the control law. The reason for employing the
voltage signal is that measuring the voltage is easier than
measuring current. It can be also assumed that the phase
difference of the voltage and the current are negligible,
within the bandwidth of the mechanical response.
3. EXPERIMENTAL METHOD
Figure 2 shows the schematic diagram of the exper-
imental setup. The parameter values of the experimen-
tal setup are shown in Table 1, and are estimated by the
method proposed in Ref. [6]. The transducer is con-
nected to a 1-DoF mass-spring-damper system, whose
mass, damping coefficient, and spring coefficient are rep-
resented by m, c, and k, respectively. The acceleration of
1476
Electromagnetic
transducer

Photo
MOSFET
+

Fig. 1 Circuit for the energy harvesting.

Fig. 3 Developed harvesting circuit mounted on an Ar-

the electromagnetic transducer is measured by the accel- duino.
eration sensor, then the velocity of the transducer is cal-
culated by the leaky integrator. For eliminating the DC
components of the sensor, this paper utilizes the below Figure 4 shows the input/output response of the photo
transfer function as the leaky integrator. MOSFET. In Fig. 4, there exists time delay of several
microseconds at ON/OFF. However, for simplicity, it is
0.1 · s
F (s) = . (2) assumed that the time delay is negligible in this paper.
2(s + 1)(s + 0.1)
The integrator is programmed onto a DSP. The sam-
pling frequency of the DSP is chosen as 1000 Hz. With
βnopt calculated by Eqs. (1) and (2), the photo MOSFET
(AQV201, Panasonic) is switched by the PWM output
of the Arduino Uno. PWM frequency of the Arduino is
about 490.6 Hz. Figure 3 shows the developed energy
harvesting circuit and the Arduino.
Electromagnetic
transducer iin MBR1645G
vB+

+ 6800
F
Velocity of
Mechanical System AQV201
Photo
MOSFET
+ 6800
F
vin
vB-

MBR1645G
200
Fig. 4 Input/output response of the photo MOSFET.
Acceleration
Sensor DSP Arduino

Fig. 2 Experimental setup.
Table 1 Parameter values of the experimental setup.
L0 [H] R0 [Ω] φ [N/A or Vs/m]
0.0055 2.5
m [kg] c [Ns/m] k [N/m]
1.7 1.9
The reason for using the photo MOSFET is described
in detail below. In general, a MOSFET can be used as
a switch element. However, the voltage of the charging
capacitor increased even in the absence of voltage gen-
eration of the transducer, when a normal MOSFET was
used in the step-up chopper circuit. This may be due to
the current flowing from the Arduino through the para-
sitic capacitance of the MOSFET. Therefore, this paper
uses a photo MOSFET, whose input and output are iso-
lated in comparison with a normal MOSFET.
4. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
The amplitude of the open-circuit voltage of the trans-
ducer is about 300 to 400 [mV], and the frequency is
about 8 [Hz], when the free vibration response is mea-
sured. Then, the excitation force is selected as a sine
wave with a frequency of 8 [Hz] and an amplitude of
2.5 about 3 [N]. Figure 5 shows the measured voltage of the
charging capacitors in the experiment. Since the maxi-
4500 mum value of the electromotive force is about 300 to 400
mV, we can confirm that the voltage is boosted by the
step-up chopper. Figure 6 shows the experimental result
of the duty ratio calculated by the DSP. As the charging
voltages rise, the lower bound of the duty ratio increases.
5. CONCLUSIONS
This paper has proposed an energy harvesting circuit
with a photo MOSFET and an Arduino. The optimal duty
ratio is calculated by a DSP and the photo MOSFET is
controlled by the Arduino. The measured charged volt-
age showed an agreement with the prediction of the pre-
1477
 0.8
2387-2396, 2011.
vB+ [5] T. Ikegame, K. Takagi and I. Jikuya “Efficiency
vB-
0.6 analysis of energy harvesting using an electromag-
0.4
netic transducer and a pulse width modulated step-up
chopper circuit”, 26th International Conference on
0.2
Adaptive Structures and Technologies (ICAST2015),
Voltage [V]

0
No. 18, 2015.
[6] T. Ikegame, K. Takagi, T. Inoue and I. Jikuya “Sen-
-0.2
sorless Parameter Estimation of Electromagnetic
-0.4 Transducer Considering Eddy Currents”, Mechatron-
ics, doi:10.1016/j.mechatronics.2017.06.001, 2017.
-0.6

-0.8
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
Time [sec]

Fig. 5 Voltage of the charging capacitor in the experi-

ment.

0.95

0.9
Duty ratio [-]

0.85

0.8

0.75

0.7

0.65
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
Time [sec]

Fig. 6 Duty ratio in the experiment.

viously studied results. As a future work, the Arduino

could be the controller for the harvesting system without
the DSP.

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