Ambient Power Supply for On-Board Vehicle Health Monitoring MEMS Sensors

To support its use of MEMS sensors for vehicle health monitoring, the Air Force seeks to couple the harvesting of ambient energy sources with a micro energy storage device. Microbatteries have demonstrated their viability as a high density power source, but their short operating life limits their usefulness. To extend the operating life of microbatteries, ambient energy sources can be used to continuously recharge the microbattery. However, to operationally support the use of microbatteries for MEMS sensors, it is necessary to increase the reliability of ambient energy collection and to develop an efficient approach to controlling the continuous recharging of the microbattery. Ambient Micro proposes an Ambient Micro Power Supply (AMPS) that couples multiple ambient energy sources with an ASIC that combines a power integrator and constant voltage charge controller with a microbattery. Ambient Micro is currently developing a Multi-Source Ambient Power Supply funded by the Office of Naval Research. We propose to leverage this work to accelerate the development of the ASIC by completing a working prototype during Phase 1. Ambient Micro will seek “fast track” matching funds in Phase 2 to expedite the design and fabrication of the micro power supply ASIC.