[2023] Project 3 at Nexperia: Project 3: Implementation of a MPPT Analog Signal Processing Block

Background
In energy harvesting ICs, Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) is a key feature. Depending on the available input power, MPPT will change the gain and frequency of the Charge pump (CP), in order to match the input impedance of the CP with the equivalent impedance of the input source, to maximize the transferred power. To do this, MPPT comprises main blocks of Analog (for sensing, amplifying, filtering and driving the ADC), Analog to Digital Converter (to bring the sensed data into the digital domain) and Digital (to generate the required frequency and gain control bits). The Analog and Mixed-signal block (A/D) performance can limit the accuracy, power consumption, and speed of the MPPT operation. In this project, the aim is to focus on low power and area-efficient design of Analog/A/D of MPPT block.

Goal
The design and implementation of the MPPT analog front end, nicely combining the sensing/amplification and filtering with low-power A/D conversion.

Assignment

• Literature study on low-power implementation of current sensing + low-power ADCs
• Conceptual design of the analog front end plus ADC (If SAR, then an efficient DAC switching scheme should be selected)
• Schematic design of the above-mentioned circuits
• Verification of above mentioned schematic design for temperature, process and voltage variation
• Layout design and do post-layout simulations to show the expected performance

Requirements

MSc student in Electrical Engineering, the Microelectronics track. Please send me your list of courses, incl. the grades achieved, and a brief motivation email. An onsite interview will be part of the selection procedure.

Contact

Last modified: 2024-02-13