This paper presents a brief history of energy harvesting for low-power systems followed by a review of the state-of-the-art of energy harvesting techniques, power conversion, power management, and battery charging. The advances in energy harvesting from vibration, thermal, and RF sources are reviewed as well as power management techniques. Examples of discrete form implementation and integrated form implementation using microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) and CMOS microelectronic processes are also given. The comparison between the reviewed works concludes this paper. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.