Patent ID: 7105982

Claim:
An apparatus for harvesting energy from a transducer comprising: an input storage element, connected to receive an energy signal originated by the transducer and to store electrical energy received therefrom; a controlled conversion element, connected to the input storage element and to provide a converted signal therefrom, and to constrain an input storage element voltage value to vary only within a controlled operating voltage range that varies from a low operating voltage value to a high operating voltage value, the high operating voltage value being less than a peak open-circuit voltage value that corresponds to an input storage element voltage value to which the input storage element would rise under excitation if no other circuit elements were attached to it; an output storage element, connected to the controlled conversion element, and to store energy received from the converted signal; and a load circuit, connected to receive energy from the output storage element, wherein the controlled operating voltage range is derived by determining a maximum average power throughput from the transducer to the load circuit.