A new approach to design electromagnetic transducers for wideband electrically-tuned vibration energy harvesting

Abstract

This paper focuses on the opportunities offered by electrical tuning to widen the bandwidth of Vibration Energy Harvesters (VEH) based on electromagnetic conversion. The paper shows that some electromagnetic transducer topologies are more likely than others to take advantage of the wide bandwidth performance offered by electrical tuning. Using a general model including both a resonant electromagnetic VEH and a resistive-capacitive interface with electrical tuning, we highlight the parameters of interest influencing the bandwidth of the system. Based on these results, we develop an efficient optimization approach suitable for any electromagnetic transducer topology. The full optimization of different transducer topologies shows that the one that is based on variable reluctance is the best in terms of bandwidth-related performances.