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Second International Conference on Emerging Trends in Engineering and Technology, ICETET-09

Modeling of Cantilever Based Power Harvester as an Innovative


Power Source for RFID Tag

Mr. Suresh S. Balpande

Mr. Sudhir B. Lande

Mr.Umesh Akare

Mr. Laxman Thakre

Digital Electronics.
RCET, Bhilai.
Affilated to CSV Tech.
University .,Bhilai.
sbalpande@yahoo.com

Asst.Prof, Department of
Electronics & Tele. Engg.
RCET, Bhilai.
Affilated to CSV Tech.
University,Bhilai.
landeeed@yahoo.co.in

Digital Electronics.
RCET, Bhilai.
Affilated to CSV Tech.
University,Bhilai.
uakare@rediffmail.com

Digital Electronics.
RCET, Bhilai.
Affilated to CSV Tech.
University,Bhilai.
laxmanthakre@yahoo.com

possible to build power source on the same wafer which


reduces the size and cost[2].

Abstract Recently, battery powered RFID tags have attracted


attention as the latest technology for commodity management .
Every day, we come across many applications where passive
and active RFID tags are used. But active tags not really
portable due to battery which demands frequent charging and
replacement. As battery technology is not advancing by the
same rate , thus we need to think concretely for an alternate
energy sources. An attempt has been made to model an
innovative source of energy using lead zirconium titanate as
piezoelectric material. The model comprises of three major
components i.e. stack of piezoelectric plates ,voltage multiplier
circuit , super capacitor as storage device. The random
vibrations were treated as a source of mechanical energy.

TABLE. I..
ACTIVE RFID TAG AND POWER ESTIMATION

TEAM
WORK
Guard RFID
solutions[3]

Sleep mode: 0.5 A


Avg power consumption
: 3V * 0.5 A = 1.5 W
Active mode: 3 A in duration of 100 s
every 1 sec
Avg power consumption:
3V * 3 A * (100 s / 1 s) = 0.9 nW
TX mode: 25 mA in duration of 1 ms every 10
sec
Avg power consumption: 3V * 25 mA * (1
ms / 10 s) = 7.5 mW

Modeling of
RF tag[4]
CMOS
Design[5]
Spartan-3
FPGA based
design[6]

1.1 Micro-Watt

Index Terms RFID tag, Piezoelectric generator, voltage


multiplier

I.
INTRODUCTION
In every field, an atomization is the key issue and players
are sensors, control system and actuators. There are various
systems where we find difficulty in powering the nodes
throughout life as the battery replacement is infeasible . The
few examples are vehicle tire sensor ,vibration sensor
placed in bridge structure, pacemaker planted in human
body, RFID planted in animal body. There are thousands of
other applications where we can think of the operations
once in a lifetime as object or body may never come across
for the battery replacement .This is the problem which
forces us to think concretely for an alternative source of
power. Since VLSI technology helping a lot to design micro
power devices, thus a self-powered system by means of
energy harvesting becomes very attractive. We explore the
possibility of an innovative approach of this technique
which avails super capacitor at the place of battery in some
cases. The piezoelectric generator is a simple mechanical
beam structure with piezoelectric slab cemented on the top
as shown in fig.2. [1][2]. The electrical circuit i.e. voltage
multiplier composed with ultra low threshold voltage
diodes. This subsystem is used to boost up the voltage level
of few millivolt to volt. The design parameters of the
cantilever structure are chosen in such a way that it would
be compatible to micro-fabrication techniques. We propose
this design for MEMS implementation which makes

978-0-7695-3884-6/09 $26.00 2009 IEEE

POWER ESTIMATION

Micro-Watt,

Wake-up signal 0.001 mW


Preamble detect.0.005 mW
Manchester decoder 0.284 mW
Quiescent power 0 mW
Total 0.29 mW

We studied many techniques and refer research papers for


knowing the maximum power consumption required for
active RFID tags as listed in table I. The EDA tool i.e.
System Vision offers powerful capabilities for modeling
components and their interactions in multiple domains. In
the present work, we have used Matlab script, SPICE and
VHDL-AMS which offers various abstraction levels &
tolerance groups to determine accurate values of analog
quantities. This paper is organized as follows: section-1
presents the modeling of the beam and piezoelectric layer,
Section-2 presents performance evaluation of optimized
piezoelectric generator and section-3 describes a power
management circuit in the structural way using ultra low
threshold diodes[2].

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B. Cantilever beam model


The Euler Bernoulli method has been adopted for
modeling because of an accuracy. It does not assume that
the piezo-plate bends on its neutraal axis. Therefore higher
order beam theory i.e. Euler Bern
noullis conventions are
used for analysis. The following equations estimate the
effect of force on mass and predict the deflection in the
cantilever bar. The governing equattions of the beam are

Fig.1. Block diagram of piezoelectric powerr harvester.

2 2 y
EI
= q
x 2 x 2

In most of the active tags, an energy-aware irregular


clock structure, together with clock gatinng, achieves low
power consumption in the baseband processsor as illustrated
in fig.2. The main source of power consumpption is the clock
generator and thus it has to be controlled w
wisely as per the
availability of power
level of either battery or super capacitor[4].
II.

(2)
where E*I is the flexural rigidity. F is the shear, q is the
distributed load per unit length.
2
x 2

2 y w 2 y
=0
EI 2 +
2
x g t

(3)

s
by inertia of the
For free vibrations of beams ,q is supplied
beam per unit length .The weight of
o the beam & length are
denoted by w & x respectively . Asssuming that the solution
of Eq. 3 is separable for time and sp
pace, we can write

NERATORS
PIEZOELECTRIC GEN

A. Working Principal
The piezoelectric effect is a property of certain materials

y ( x , t ) = Y ( x ) f (t )

(4)

C. Uniform Beam:

BEAM LENGTH

FORCE

PIEZO T HICKNESS
T
BEAM THCKNESS
Lpiezo

Fig.2. Block diagram of Active RFID T


Tag .

BEAM LENG
GT H

like PVDF, PZT, BaTiO3 .When the materiial is subjected to


mechanical strain, suffers an electriccal polarization
proportional to the applied strain. The phenomena of
piezoelectricity is described by the piezoeleectric constitutive
equations
E
ij

Si = s T j + dli El

Fig.3. Rectangular cantilever with


h PZT slab

In case of a uniform beam ,EI and


d W are constant so that
expression becomes (Harmonic mottion of frequency ).

(1)

T
Dm = mn
En + d mk Tk

4 y w

y=0
x4 g EI

For i, j, k =1,26 and l, m, n= 1,2,3.. Where T is the


applied mechanical stress ,E is the appliedd electric field, d
corresponds to piezo strain,

T
mn

Let

is the peermittivity under

conditions of constant stress, D is the electrric displacement,


S is the mechanical strain and

sijE is the coompliance tensor

under conditions of constant electric field.

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4 =

w 2
g EI

(5)

(6)

TABLE. II.
NATURAL OPERATING FREQUENCIES OF BEAM

4 y
4 y = 0
4
x

(7)

Natural
frequencies
1
2
3

Above equ.7 is broken up into a product form viz.


2
2
2
2
2 2 + y = 0
x
x

(8)

At x=0 ,

(ii)

y
At x=0,
=0
dx

y=0

2 y
=0
dx 2
3 y
=0
(iv) At x=l ,
dx3
(iii)

At x= l,

( i.e. Zero deflection )


(i.e. Zero slope )

(17)

F i ( t ) = F 0 s in ( t ) x i L f
And random noise driving force is expressed as

( i.e. Zero bending moment )

F (t ) = Fo sin(random t random )

(i.e. Zero shear force )

Where

Using boundary condition (i) & (ii) in equation 12 yields


A+C=0 , (B+D)=0

(18)

i=0

(9)

random

is random frequency , random is the phase

shift with values between 0 to 2


and n is the arbitrary
number of iterations. The solution for governing equation
using separation of variables method. The general solution
is given as

(10)

We obtain

y = A(cosh x cos x ) + B (sinh x sin x )

i ( x, t ) = ( x) q(t )

(11)
Now

(19)

The conventional integral for any arbitrary input to evaluate


q(t)

y
2
2 = [ A(coshl +cosl) + B(sinhl +sinl)] = 0
dx
x=l
2

q (t ) =

(12)

di

n t

F ( )e

n t

sin(di (t )) dt

(20)

And

The average value of curvature of the beam can be


computed using the following expression ,

3 y
3
3 = [ B(coshl + cosl) + A(sinhl sinl)] = 0
dx
x=l

1
k (t ) =
Lp

(14)
We get the following solution from the last two equations

Lp

2 w( x, t )
x 2

(21)

The applied moment acting on beam is the product of


average beam curvature , modulus of elasticity , and
moment of inertia of the beam structure.

A = sinh l + sin l = cosh l + cos l

B
cosh l + cos l
sinh l sin l

M (t ) = Eb I b k (t )

(15)

(22)

Where Eb and Ib are the youngs modulus and MOI of


rectangular beam respectively. The approximate voltage is
computed as[7]-[10]
g33M (1 + T )n
6
Vharvested =

(23)
2 2
bt a 1 + T + 2 (2 + 3T + 2T 2 )

Equating the above two equations ,We get

cos l cosh l = 1

306.8
2110.0
6278.0

The equ.16 gives ith beam natural frequencies as illustrated


in table I. The maximum deflection takes place when
driving force and beams natural frequency are matched.
The external applied harmonic force can be expressed as
shown below.

In such a case, the boundary conditions are


(i)

HZ

(16)

Equ. 16 can then be solved for l . The first n roots can be


computed .The corresponding values of natural frequencies
may be obtained from the Matlab plot.

Where T = tb , n= number of plates & = Eb tb


Ea ta
ta

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TABLE III.
PARAMETERS OF THE BEAM AND P
PZT [18]
Parameters
Length

Conventional Values
(Beam)
(PZT)

Unitss

20000

20000

Microometer

Thickness

100

10

Microometer

Width

5000

5000

Microometer

Youngs
modulus
Voltage
constant
Dielectric
constant

190

62

GPa

---

24.8*10-3

Vm/N
N

----

374*10-12

m/V

Fig.4 Voltage plot for conventional an


nd optimized parameters.

IV.

III. PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF HA


ARVESTER
A. Natural operating frequencies

VOLTAGE MULT
TIPLIER CIRCUIT

C1

The natural frequencies are found as giveen in table II. As


other frequency component doesnt contriibute much ,thus
we considered only 1st natural frequency.. The parametric
study of several variables i.e. PZT length, location
,thickness ratio and forcing point in order to determine the
effect on the power generation. The plott as illustrated in
fig. 4 indicates 2700% improvement in thee output of piezo
generator for random force[7],[11]-[13].
.
B. Optimization in dimensions of the ccantilever

AC

C5

C3

D1

D2

C2

D
D4

D3

C4

D6

D5

C6

Fig.5 Villard six stage voltage multiplier circuit

This circuit is used to multiply and


d rectify the input voltage
based on diodes and capacitors. The output voltage of the
maller than the threshold
micro-power generator is often sm
voltage of the standard diode. To overcome this problem,
we proposed a novel low thresshold diodes based on
DTMOS (Dynamic threshold MO
OS ) technology. This
technology can be realized by con
nnecting gate, drain and
bulk together [1]. The plot shows that output is multiplied
by factor 6 . The input voltage of 200mV p-p was applied
and observed the output of 1.2 V dcc.

The following table indicates conventionaal and optimized


dimensions of the cantilever. It has been ffound that 12000
m length can produce more output aas compared to
20,000m. Similar way other dimensionns are also scaled
for optimization. The following set of the values are found
through experimentation[12].
TABLE IV.
CONVENTIONAL & OPTIMIZED PARA
AMETERS

Parameters

Conventional

Optimized

Units

20000

12000

Micrometer

thickness

10

80

Micrometer

Thickness
ratio

0.10

0.80

20000

20000

Length

Forcing
point

OUTPUT
VOLTAGE

--Micrometer
Fig.6. Output voltage levels off multiplier circuit

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V.

RESULTS AND DISC


CUSSION

A. Results for conventional & optimized geometries


The plot reveals that conventional geomeetry of beam and
PZT can produce few mill volts only as shhown in fig.7.

Fig.8 Output voltage plot for harmonic force

B. Plot of harvested power for conventional


c
and
optimized geometry
The generated power is calculted by
y taking product of RMS
values of curent and voltage.Th
he fig.9 shows power
generation for convetional and op
ptimized geometry. The
various tests were conducted on conventional geometry
taking standard values of the cantilv
ver diamensions taken by
other authors. It is observed that the optimized geometry
produces 27 times strong outtput as compared to
conventional. Each diamension wass scaled in 10 -100 equal
parts and applied to the model for optimization.

Fig.7 Output voltage plot for random force


TABLE V.
RAMETERS
CONVENTIONAL AND OPTIMIZED PAR
Conve
Parameter

ntional

Optimized

Improvem
ment

Units

Max

Max

1.48

7.36

497

Volt

0.5

13.9

2780

mW

Harvested
voltage
Power
(For 1K
Load )

The model has been tested for random driviing force. This is
the output for one plate and simply getss added if more
number of plates are connected in series. In the first test,
harmonic force was applied to conventionnal geometry and
later on to optimized one. It is found thatt there are lot of
improvements in voltage levels in casse of optimized
geometry.

Fig.9 Output power plot for conventional an


nd optimized geometry

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VI.

[4] Yang Hong, Chi Fat Chan, Jianping Guo, Yuen Sum Ng, Weiwei Shi,
Lai Kan Leung, Ka Nang Leung, Chiu Sing Choy and Kong Pang Pun
Design of Passive UHF RFID Tag in 130nm CMOS Technology
IEEE Trans. Circuits and. Systems, 1999. Pp 1371-1374.
[5] Ahmed Ashry, Khaled Sharaf, Magdi Ibrahim A compact low-power
UHF RFID tag, Microelectronics Journ al,Elsevier,2009,in press.
[6] Alex K. Jones,, Raymond Hoare, Swapna Dontharaju,, Shenchih Tung,
Ralph Sprang, Joshua Fazekas, James T. Cain, Marlin H. Mickle, An
automated, FPGA-based reconfigurable, low-power RFID tag,
Microprocessors and Microsystems 31 (2007) pp 116134.
[7] Daniel J. Inman, Vibration engineering , 3rd Edition, Prentice Hall 2000,pp 1-64,466-524.
[8] Lorento Mateu and francesc Moll,System level simulation of a self
powered sensor with piezoelectric energy harvesting, in proceeding2007International conference on sensor technologies and applications,
pp 399-404.
[9]Marcin Marzencki,Yasser Ammar, Skandar Basrour Integrated power
harvesting system including a MEMS generator and
a power
management circuit , IEEE Transducer international conference 2007,
pp. 887-890.
[10]S.P.beeby, M.J.Tudor, N.M.white Energy harvesting vibration
sources for Microsystems applications Review article, Measurement
Science and Technology, Institute of Physics publishing-2006,pp R175R195.
[11] Don L. DeVoe and Albert P. Pisano Modeling and Optimal Design of
Piezoelectric
Cantilever
Microactuators
,Journal
of
microelectromechanical systems, vol. 6, September 1997,pp 266-270.
[12]SM.J.cunningham, D.F.L. Jenkins, M.M. Bakush Experimental
investigation of optimum thickness of a piezoelectric element for
cantilever actuation. In proceeding IEEE science & measurement Tech
,Vol.144 ,1997,pp. 45-48.
[13] Henry A. Sudano, Daniel J. Inman, Estimation of electric charge
output for piezoelectric energy harvesting Strain Journal, 2004 ,pp 128.
[14] P. Ashenden, G. D. Peterson, D. A. Teegarden, The System designer's
Guide to VHDL-AMS, Morgan Kaufman publications.

CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK

It has been observed that the proposed power harvester can


generate 7.36 V (max) and power of 13.9 mW (max) and
0.54 mW (min). It is sufficient to drive RFID tag which
demands only 7.5 microwatts of power for 3-5 seconds of
interval as shown in table I. The design of baseband
controller used in active RFID demand very low power due
to availability of modern low power VLSI circuits. Thus
many commercial circuits can be used with power
harvesting system other RFID tag i.e. Calculator with solar
plate now capable of supplying the required power. In this
paper, we propose
the design considerations and
performance up gradation, modeling of voltage multiplier
circuit using DTMOS .The simulation results reveals that
2780% improvement in generated power output for
optimized geometry and also reduces cost of the material
due to reduction in conventional dimensions.
REFERENCES
[1] Hela Boussetta,Marcin Marzencki,Yasser Ammar, Skandar Basrour
Multilevel Modeling of Integrated Power Harvesting System using
VHDL-AMS and SPICE , IEEE international conference BMAS 2007,
pp .126-131.
[2] M.Takeuchi, S.Matsuzawa, K. Tairaku and C. Takatsu Piezoelectric
Generator as Power Supply for RFID- Tags and Applications 2007
IEEE Ultrasonic Symposium, pp 2558-61.
[3]Project: IEEE P802.15 Working Group for Wireless personal area
Networks (WPANs) ,May 2009, https://mentor.ieee.org/802.15/dcn/
09/15-09-0405-00-004f-active-rfid-and-rtls-mac-and-phyparameters.ppt

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