A Comparative Study of Different Types of Piezoelectric Interface Circuits to Perform Simultaneous Sensing and Energy Harvesting

This article presents a comparison of 4 different types of rectifier circuits for piezoelectric energy harvesting. Energy is harvested from multiple piezoelectric elements embedded in an in?sole while simultaneously collecting gait information of the subject wearing it. The study is based on an asymmetric signal generated while walking and the harvested energy is utilized to operate a system under a fixed electrical load. The influence of back-up battery and insole design optimization on the accuracy of collected information is taken into consideration. A comprehensive approach for shoe insole application based on simultaneous piezoelectric sensing and energy harvesting is presented in this work.