Electronic shelf label (ESL)

The retail market is undergoing significant changes as digitization and retail automation in increasingly embraced. One example of this is the use of e-paper displays as Electronic Shelf Labels (ESLs). Used to display product parameters on shelves, ESLs enable retailers to update prices automatically in real-time across a store (or even multiple stores), eliminating days of tedious and error-prone manual work. To remove the operational costs of manually monitoring and replacing batteries of thousands of units within a retail space, autonomous ESL designs are employing rechargeable batteries with indoor light energy harvesting using miniature solar cells.

Block diagram

Products

Design considerations

Optimizing the battery and solar cell choice is key to make the ESL energy autonomous using an energy harvesting PMIC
Cost is a key concern, so standard SOT23 / SOT323 package options can be preferred to smaller, more efficient SMD packages
E-paper displays supply voltage is typically 3.3 V, depending on the microcontroller a voltage translator may be required

Adaptive energy harvesting PMIC enables environmentally friendly autonomous, connected devices

Ambient energy harvesting has often been proposed for recharging batteries in remote internet-of-things devices but hasn’t yet taken off. Nexperia's new dedicated PMIC is set to radically improve the viability of energy harvesting with significant benefits for the environment.ve energy harvesting PMIC enables environmentally friendly autonomous, connected devices