Linear Technology and Energy Micro demonstrate ideas on smart energy harvesting
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Linear Technology and Energy Micro have combined their knowledge in energy harvesting power supplies and ultralow power 32-bit microcontrollers to showcase the opportunities for smart energy harvesting applications at electronica 2010.
The demonstration is based on Energy Micro's starter development kit. It is said to rely on Linear Technology's LTC3588 piezoelectric energy harvesting power supply and Energy Micro's ARM Cortex-M3 enabled EFM32 Gecko microcontroller. This reportedly works to create a wireless sensor node acquiring data from a three-axis accelerometer, transmitting it over a Zigbee RF transceiver.
"Using sustainable, kinetic, photovoltaic and thermal energy sources to power microcontrollers requires energy harvesting power supplies capable of both very high efficiency conversion and very low quiescent power loss," said Don Paulus, Vice President & General Manager of Power Products at Linear Technology. "At the same time, microcontrollers have to offer very low power operating modes and the application software flexibility to make the best use of the harvested energy – the EFM32 Gecko MCU provides such attributes."
Øyvind Janbu, cto at Energy Micro, said, "Linear Technology's ultra low power energy harvesting power supplies match perfectly well with the needs of the EFM32's energy modes. This demonstration illustrates the tremendous opportunities open to designers of smarter energy harvesting products."
