A Low-power Two-Stage Active Rectifier for Energy Harvesting Applications

This paper presents a new architecture of a two-stage active rectifier suitable for energy harvesting applications. The two-stage structure can be separated firstly into a passive stage, including one negative voltage converter, and secondly, an active stage that consists of a NOT gate used to drive the active diode switch. The rectifier is fully designed and simulated using 0.13μm CMOS technology. The circuit rectifies input AC signals from 0.6V to 4.5V, reaching a maximum output voltage of 3.45V. The power conversion efficiency is 40.4%, with a low power consumption of 17.7 μW.