A Self-Powered Gas Sensor Integrated Circuit Based on Photovoltaic Energy Harvesting

Dang Hung Phan; Min Kyu Je

doi:10.23075/jicas.2023.9.1.006

Dang Hung Phan Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7663-0872
Min Kyu Je Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology

DOI: https://doi.org/10.23075/jicas.2023.9.1.006

Keywords: Energy Harvesting, Offset Cancellation, Photovoltaic Cell, Self-Powered, Shared Inductor, Wireless Sensor Node

Abstract

A self-powered gas sensor integrated circuit (IC) suitable for wireless sensor nodes is designed in 0.18 μm CMOS process. The novel idea of using the output of the photovoltaic (PV) cell covered by the gas-sensing film allows the proposed sensor system to have low power consumption and compact size. A dual-input shared-inductor boost converter is used to harvest energy efficiently from two PV cells instead of connecting these cells in parallel when the system is exposed to gases. This shows up to 11% improvement of conversion efficiency at 2% H₂ gas concentration. Maximum end-to-end efficiency of 88% is achieved at an output power of 3 mW, and the quiescent current is only 289 nA. An input-offset-storage autozeroing technique is used for opamp offset cancellation to achieve high-accuracy gas detection. A modified split-capacitor digital-to-analog converter (DAC) architecture is used for achieving a small area in the signal-processing block.

Author Biographies

Dang Hung Phan, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology

Phan Dang Hung received the B.S. degree from Hanoi University of Science and Technology, Hanoi, Vietnam, in 2017, and the M.S. degree from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon, Korea, in 2019. He is currently working toward the Ph.D. degree at KAIST. His research interests include sensor interface, power management, and energy harvesting ICs.

Min Kyu Je, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology

Min Kyu Je received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees, all in Electrical Engineering, from Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon, Korea, in 1996, 1998, and 2003, respectively.

In 2003, he joined Samsung Electronics, Giheung, Korea, as a Senior Engineer and worked on multi-mode multi-band RF transceiver SoCs for GSM/GPRS/EDGE /WCDMA standards. From 2006 to 2013, he was with Institute of Microelectronics (IME), Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore. He worked as a Senior Research Engineer from 2006 to 2007, a Member of Technical Staff from 2008 to 2011, a Senior Scientist in 2012, and a Deputy Director in 2013. From 2011 to 2013, he led the Integrated Circuits and Systems Laboratory at IME as a Department Head. In IME, he led various projects developing low-power 3D accelerometer ASICs for high-end medical motion sensing applications, readout ASICs for nanowire biosensor arrays detecting DNA/RNA and protein biomarkers for point-of-care diagnostics, ultra-low-power sensor node SoCs for continuous real-time wireless health monitoring, and wireless implantable sensor ASICs for medical devices, as well as low-power radio SoCs and MEMS interface/control SoCs for consumer electronics and industrial applications. He was also a Program Director of NeuroDevices Program under A*STAR Science and Engineering Research Council (SERC) from 2011 to 2013, and an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at National University of Singapore (NUS) from 2010 to 2013. He was an Associate Professor in the Department of Information and Communication Engineering at Daegu Gyenogbuk Institute of Science and Technology (DGIST), Korea from 2014 to 2015. Since 2016, he has been an Associate Professor in the School of Electrical Engineering at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Korea.

His main research areas are advanced IC platform development including smart sensor interface ICs and ultra-low-power wireless communication ICs, as well as microsystem integration leveraging the advanced IC platform for emerging applications such as intelligent miniature biomedical devices, ubiquitous wireless sensor nodes, and future mobile devices. He is an editor of 1 book, an author of 6 book chapters, and has more than 300 peer-reviewed international conference and journal publications in the areas of sensor interface IC, wireless IC, biomedical microsystem, 3D IC, device modeling and nanoelectronics. He also has more than 50 patents issued or filed. He has served on the Technical Program Committee and Organizing Committee for various international conferences, symposiums and workshops including IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), IEEE Asian Solid-State Circuits Conference (A-SSCC) and IEEE Symposium on VLSI Circuits (SOVC). He is currently working as a Distinguished Lecturer of IEEE Circuits and Systems Society.

Homepage : https://impact.kaist.ac.kr/

A Self-Powered Gas Sensor Integrated Circuit Based on Photovoltaic Energy Harvesting

Abstract

Author Biographies

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