A High-Efficiency Broadband Rectenna for Ambient Wireless Energy Harvesting

Abstract

This paper presents a novel broadband rectenna for ambient wireless energy harvesting over the frequency band from 1.8 to 2.5 GHz. First of all, the characteristics of the ambient radio-frequency energy are studied. The results are then used to aid the design of a new rectenna. A novel two-branch impedance matching circuit is introduced to enhance the performance and efficiency of the rectenna at a relatively low ambient input power level. A novel broadband dual-polarized cross-dipole antenna is proposed which has embedded harmonic rejection property and can reject the 2 nd and 3 rd harmonics to further improve the rectenna efficiency. The measured power sensitivity of this design is down to -35 dBm and the conversion efficiency reaches 55% when the input power to the rectifier is -10 dBm. It is demonstrated that the output power from the proposed rectenna is higher than the other published designs with a similar antenna size under the same ambient condition. The proposed broadband rectenna could be used to power many low-power electronic devices and sensors and found a range of potential applications.

A Flexible 2.45-GHz Power Harvesting Wristband With Net System Output From −24.3 dBm of RF Power

“…19 and 20) which could be explained by the fact that the spice model of the diode is limited especially at high power levels above −10 dBm. This limitation also appears in [41]. Also, the efficiency is very sensitive to the source power level accuracy.…”

“…2) Unlike other systems such as Song '15 [41] in which the rectifier was designed for a wide range of RF power levels, the rectifier of this paper was locally optimized at −20 dBm. Rectifier of this paper compared with the state of the art at 2.45 GHz: Lorenz'15 [42], Song'15 [41], Olgun'11 [33], and Suh'02 [44]. Also, integrated circuit implementations for 900 MHz are shown: Powercast [45], Stoopman'14 [43], and Le'08 [46].…”

RF power harvesting: a review on designing methodologies and applications

“…Therefore, transmitting and receiving low frequency waves requires a large aperture, which is not suitable for small device applications. The antenna designed in [24] has a sensitivity as low as −35 dBm (0.32 µW), but the tradeoff is a large size aperture measuring up to 64.68 cm 3 (7 × 7 × 1.32 cm). The bandwidth of an antenna is the range of frequencies in which the antenna can operate efficiently.…”

A Novel Dual-Band Rectenna for Ambient RF Energy Harvesting at GSM 900 MHz and 1800 MHz

“…As observed from the table, this work provides a dual-band design with higher conversion efficiency compared to others at the input power level of -20 dBm. However, the total size is bigger than [16,[22][23][24] and smaller than [7] because of the large dimension of DC filter and dual-band coplanar receiving antenna. The rectenna efficiency is quite high compared to rectifier efficiency at section 3.…”