Thurein Paing

Bio: Thurein Paing is an academic researcher from University of Colorado Boulder. The author has contributed to research in topics: Rectenna & Low-power electronics. The author has an hindex of 6, co-authored 7 publications receiving 562 citations.

Resistor Emulation Approach to Low-Power RF Energy Harvesting

Abstract: This paper presents an approach and associated circuitry for harvesting near maximum output power from electromagnetic waves in the RF/microwave region of the spectrum with variable incident power densities in the range of tens of muW/cm2. It is shown that open loop resistor emulation at the input port of a power converter is a suitable solution for tracking the peak power point of a low-power rectifying antenna source over a wide range of incident RF power densities. A boost converter with a simple low-power control approach for resistor emulation is presented. A hardware design example with detailed efficiency analysis is given using commercially available discrete circuitry. Experimental results are presented for a system harvesting 420 muW to 8 muW from a 6 cm times 6 cm rectifying antenna with incident RF power ranging from 70 muW/cm2 to 30 muW/cm2, respectively. The results demonstrate that resistor emulation is a simple and practical approach to energy harvesting with variable low-power radiative RF sources.

Active health monitoring of an aircraft wing with an embedded piezoelectric sensor/actuator network: II. Wireless approaches

Abstract: The objective of this study is to develop a wireless ultrasonic structural health monitoring (SHM) system for aircraft wing inspection. In part I of the study (Zhao et al 2007 Smart?Mater.?Struct. 16 1208?17), small, low cost and light weight piezoelectric (PZT) disc transducers were bonded to various parts of an aircraft wing for detection, localization and growth monitoring of defects. In this part, two approaches for wirelessly interrogating the sensor/actuator network were developed and tested. The first one utilizes a pair of reactive coupling monopoles to deliver 350?kHz RF tone-burst interrogation pulses directly to the PZT transducers for generating ultrasonic guided waves and to receive the response signals from the PZTs. It couples enough energy to and from the PZT transducers for the wing panel inspection, but the signal is quite noisy and the monopoles need to be in close proximity to each other for efficient coupling. In the second approach, a small local diagnostic device was developed that can be embedded into the wing and transmit the digital signals FM-modulated on a 915?MHz carrier. The device has an ultrasonic pulser that can generate 350?kHz, 70?V tone-burst signals, a multiplexed A/D board with a programmable gain amplifier for multi-channel data acquisition, a microprocessor for circuit control and data processing, and a wireless module for data transmission. Power to the electronics is delivered wirelessly at X-band with an antenna?rectifier (rectenna) array conformed to the aircraft body, eliminating the need for batteries and their replacement. It can effectively deliver at least 100?mW of DC power continuously from a transmitter at a range of 1?m. The wireless system was tested with the PZT sensor array on the wing panel and compared well with the wire connection case.

Wirelessly-Powered Wireless Sensor Platform

Abstract: This paper presents a low-power (~10 muW) 2.45-GHz wireless sensor platform consisting of a three-axis accelerometer, thermometer and skin conductivity sensor. The sensor is powered wirelessly from a distance of around 3-4 m with narrowband 2.45-GHz dual-polarized low power density radiation of around 100 muW/cm2. Efficient power management enables the powering function to be independent of the wireless transmission and sensor data gathering. The sensor platform does not require battery replacements, and is intended for low-maintenance assistive technology, elder-care and medical applications.

Custom IC for Ultralow Power RF Energy Scavenging

Abstract: This letter presents a custom IC that provides an efficient interface between an ultralow power RF rectifying antenna (rectenna) power source and a microbattery for maximum power scavenging. The energy scavenger IC operates a boost converter in pulsed fixed-frequency discontinuous conduction mode to present a positive resistance to the rectenna. It uses current-starved circuitry, a nonoverlapping gate drive, and a subthreshold current source to achieve a nominal supply current in the 200-nA range for V DD = 2.5 V. Experimental results are given with the IC scavenging energy from a 1.93-GHz patch rectenna to a battery with voltages ranging from 2.5 to 4.15 V. Overall conversion efficiency including all control losses is demonstrated at over 35% at an input power of just 1.5 μW and at over 70% at input power levels over 30 μW. The IC is fabricated in a 5-V, 0.35-μm CMOS process. Although the IC was designed for RF energy scavenging, the low-power boost converter can be applied to other power sources such as wind, vibration, and temperature.

Custom IC for Ultra-low Power RF Energy Harvesting

Abstract: This paper presents a custom IC that provides an efficient interface between an ultra-low power RF rectifying antenna (rectenna) source and a microbattery, with the goal of maximum power harvesting. The energy harvester IC uses current-starved circuitry, a non-overlapping gate-drive, and a sub-threshold current source to achieve a nominal supply current in the 200 nA range for V DD = 2.5 V. Experimental results are given with the IC harvesting energy from a 1.93 GHz patch rectenna to a battery with voltages ranging from 2.5 V to 4.15 V. Overall conversion efficiency including all control losses is demonstrated at over 35 % at an input power of just 1.5 ?W and at over 70 % at input power levels over 30 ?W. The IC is fabricated in a 5 V, 0.35 ?m CMOS process. Although the IC was designed for RF energy harvesting, the low power boost converter can be applied to other power sources such as wind, vibrations, and temperature.

Wireless Information and Power Transfer: Architecture Design and Rate-Energy Tradeoff

Abstract: Simultaneous information and power transfer over the wireless channels potentially offers great convenience to mobile users. Yet practical receiver designs impose technical constraints on its hardware realization, as practical circuits for harvesting energy from radio signals are not yet able to decode the carried information directly. To make theoretical progress, we propose a general receiver operation, namely, dynamic power splitting (DPS), which splits the received signal with adjustable power ratio for energy harvesting and information decoding, separately. Three special cases of DPS, namely, time switching (TS), static power splitting (SPS) and on-off power splitting (OPS) are investigated. The TS and SPS schemes can be treated as special cases of OPS. Moreover, we propose two types of practical receiver architectures, namely, separated versus integrated information and energy receivers. The integrated receiver integrates the front-end components of the separated receiver, thus achieving a smaller form factor. The rate-energy tradeoff for the two architectures are characterized by a so-called rate-energy (R-E) region. The optimal transmission strategy is derived to achieve different rate-energy tradeoffs. With receiver circuit power consumption taken into account, it is shown that the OPS scheme is optimal for both receivers. For the ideal case when the receiver circuit does not consume power, the SPS scheme is optimal for both receivers. In addition, we study the performance for the two types of receivers under a realistic system setup that employs practical modulation. Our results provide useful insights to the optimal practical receiver design for simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT).

Harvesting Wireless Power: Survey of Energy-Harvester Conversion Efficiency in Far-Field, Wireless Power Transfer Systems

Abstract: The idea of wireless power transfer (WPT) has been around since the inception of electricity. In the late 19th century, Nikola Tesla described the freedom to transfer energy between two points without the need for a physical connection to a power source as an ?all-surpassing importance to man? [1]. A truly wireless device, capable of being remotely powered, not only allows the obvious freedom of movement but also enables devices to be more compact by removing the necessity of a large battery. Applications could leverage this reduction in size and weight to increase the feasibility of concepts such as paper-thin, flexible displays [2], contact-lens-based augmented reality [3], and smart dust [4], among traditional point-to-point power transfer applications. While several methods of wireless power have been introduced since Tesla?s work, including near-field magnetic resonance and inductive coupling, laser-based optical power transmission, and far-field RF/microwave energy transmission, only RF/microwave and laser-based systems are truly long-range methods. While optical power transmission certainly has merit, its mechanisms are outside of the scope of this article and will not be discussed.

Guided wave based structural health monitoring: A review

Abstract: The paper provides a state of the art review of guided wave based structural health monitoring (SHM). First, the fundamental concepts of guided wave propagation and its implementation for SHM is explained. Following sections present the different modeling schemes adopted, developments in the area of transducers for generation, and sensing of wave, signal processing and imaging technique, statistical and machine learning schemes for feature extraction. Next, a section is presented on the recent advancements in nonlinear guided wave for SHM. This is followed by section on Rayleigh and SH waves. Next is a section on real-life implementation of guided wave for industrial problems. The paper, though briefly talks about the early development for completeness,. is primarily focussed on the recent progress made in the last decade. The paper ends by discussing and highlighting the future directions and open areas of research in guided wave based SHM.

Wireless Information and Power Transfer: A Dynamic Power Splitting Approach

Abstract: Energy harvesting is a promising solution to prolong the operation time of energy-constrained wireless networks. In particular, scavenging energy from ambient radio signals, namely wireless energy harvesting (WEH), has recently drawn significant attention. In this paper, we consider a point-to-point wireless link over the flat-fading channel, where the receiver has no fixed power supplies and thus needs to replenish energy via WEH from the signals sent by the transmitter. We first consider a SISO (single-input single-output) system where the single-antenna receiver cannot decode information and harvest energy independently from the same signal received. Under this practical constraint, we propose a dynamic power splitting (DPS) scheme, where the received signal is split into two streams with adjustable power levels for information decoding and energy harvesting separately based on the instantaneous channel condition that is assumed to be known at the receiver. We derive the optimal power splitting rule at the receiver to achieve various trade-offs between the maximum ergodic capacity for information transfer and the maximum average harvested energy for power transfer, which are characterized by the boundary of a so-called "rate-energy (R-E)" region. Moreover, for the case when the channel state information is also known at the transmitter, we investigate the joint optimization of transmitter power control and receiver power splitting. The achievable R-E region by the proposed DPS scheme is also compared against that by the existing time switching scheme as well as a performance upper bound by ignoring the practical receiver constraint. Finally, we extend the result for optimal DPS to the SIMO (single-input multiple-output) system where the receiver is equipped with multiple antennas. In particular, we investigate a low-complexity power splitting scheme, namely antenna switching, which achieves the near-optimal rate-energy trade-offs as compared to the optimal DPS.

Opportunistic Wireless Energy Harvesting in Cognitive Radio Networks

Abstract: Wireless networks can be self-sustaining by harvesting energy from ambient radio-frequency (RF) signals. Recently, researchers have made progress on designing efficient circuits and devices for RF energy harvesting suitable for low-power wireless applications. Motivated by this and building upon the classic cognitive radio (CR) network model, this paper proposes a novel method for wireless networks coexisting where low-power mobiles in a secondary network, called secondary transmitters (STs), harvest ambient RF energy from transmissions by nearby active transmitters in a primary network, called primary transmitters (PTs), while opportunistically accessing the spectrum licensed to the primary network. We consider a stochastic-geometry model in which PTs and STs are distributed as independent homogeneous Poisson point processes (HPPPs) and communicate with their intended receivers at fixed distances. Each PT is associated with a guard zone to protect its intended receiver from ST's interference, and at the same time delivers RF energy to STs located in its harvesting zone. Based on the proposed model, we analyze the transmission probability of STs and the resulting spatial throughput of the secondary network. The optimal transmission power and density of STs are derived for maximizing the secondary network throughput under the given outage-probability constraints in the two coexisting networks, which reveal key insights to the optimal network design. Finally, we show that our analytical result can be generally applied to a non-CR setup, where distributed wireless power chargers are deployed to power coexisting wireless transmitters in a sensor network.