Distributing power and data around a garment is a common problem in sensor enabled e-textiles, as connecting separate electronic subsystems together using connectors and wires has proven to be unreliable and cumbersome. In this work a solution is presented that will eliminate the connectors by using two pairs of short-range wireless inductive links. The proposed system is able carry power from one node to the next, while at the same time facilitating data transfer between the nodes. In this work the double inductive link is analysed, and a novel compensation topology is presented. A modified class-E amplifier is proposed to generate a carrier signal, improving the system settling time. Using a placeholder data protocol the system is able to transmit 62mW of regulated power to an external load at a total efficiency of 7.3%, while simultaneously transmitting data at a rate of 8.5kbit/s. Without data transmission it is able to deliver 185mW of DC power at 6.09V unregulated, at an efficiency of 23%. The system is also shown to be capable of handling a maximum bitstream of 240kbit/s.

This report discusses one part of a project consisting of three parts. The goal of the project is to design a battery less sensor powered by RF energy fields present in an office environment. The sensor is able to measure the temperature and is able to communicate wirelessly using a low power communication protocol.In this report the energy conversion and storage of the system will be discussed. A high-frequency signal coming from an antenna must be converted to an output signal which is functional for the communication module. Therefore a steady 3.3 V DC output needed to be created with a rectifier circuit. In order to achieve maximum power transfer to the load, a matching circuit with the RF energy harvesting antenna needed to be designed. The main challenges were to achieve a high enough input voltage to reach the threshold voltage of the diodes of the rectifier and to rectify the AC input as efficient as possible. To tackle these challenges a design with a Greinacher rectifier with low-threshold Schottky diodes and a DC/DC booster is presented.