A review of fully integrated and embedded power converters for IoT

The Internet of Things (IoT) has found application in many components of implantable medical devices, wearable smart devices, monitoring systems, etc. The IoT devices are conventionally battery powered, even though, in several low power applications, they can also be powered using energy harvesting technology. Independently of the power sources (if batteries or environment), efficient and robust power converters must be designed to provide the small and distributed energy required by such IoT devices. This review paper will first provide an overview about the power consumption in IoT devices; second, it will discuss the most recent research and advance in the field of fully-integrated or embedded DC/DC converters, starting from high-performance integrated charge pumps or embedded inductive boost converters for specific harvesting sources (temperature, solar, and so on), to novel DC/DC converters for multiple energy sources.