150-nW FD-SOI Intermittent Startup Circuit for Micropower Energy Harvesting Sensor

This paper presents an intermittent startup circuit (ISC) for an energy harvesting system, especially an ultra-low power energy harvester. The ISC consists of a voltage detector and a switched capacitor voltage multiplier (SCVM) and boosts from a 0.48 V harvesting voltage to 2.4 V to startup a general DC-DC converter. To achieve both low voltage operation and low leakage current, the ISC is fabricated in a 0.6 mu m FD-SOI CMOS process. The ISC consumes only 0.3 mu A during energy harvesting, which enables energy harvesting from a 150 nW energy harvester.