Inkjet-Printed Wideband Planar Monopole Antenna on Cardboard for RF Energy-Harvesting Applications

Abstract

We present a fully inkjet-printed novel wideband planar monopole antenna on thin packaging cardboard available in bulk for low-cost and environmentally-friendly mass manufacturing. We outline the characterization and the dielectric properties of the cardboard which are imperative for the successful design of an antenna on a paper-based substrate. To achieve highly conductive inkjet-printed pattern on the fibrous and porous cardboard, we deposit thin dielectric coating on the cardboard in the same inkjet process. The operation of the antenna is attested through simulations and measurements in the frequency range of 600-1500 MHz, where there are several strong radio signals present for ambient RF energy harvesting.

Radio Frequency Energy Harvesting Sources

“…As may be expected, the different spectra in different localities possess different characteristics which are dependent on such environmental factors as humidity, and the distance from the RF signal transmitters [43]. Barroca [44] presented extensive spectrum measurement surveys within the frequencies of 300-3000 MHz in urban and suburban areas of Covilhã in Portugal. Piñuela [17] reported a comprehensive city-wide RF spectral measurement survey which was conducted from outside all of the 270 London Underground stations at street level with the aim of optimizing RF energy harvesting.…”

“…Mimis [47] presented results of indoor RF spectrum survey that was carried out in a variety of residential locations around the city of Bristol, UK between frequencies of 500 MHz and 6 GHz. In all these reported studies, there is a general conclusion that the maximum RF power density can be obtained from GSM 900/18000 bands [17, [42][43][44][45][46][47].…”

Vivaldi Antenna for RF Energy Harvesting

“…Wideband antennas for energy harvesting have been published in [8] to [10]. Antennas were conceived as a fractal monopole [8], and wideband monopoles [9], [10].…”

“…Antennas were conceived as a fractal monopole [8], and wideband monopoles [9], [10]. Antennas for energy harvesting must satisfy a number of requirements.…”

Bio-inspired optimization algorithms applied to rectenna design

“…Table 2 shows the antenna performance of some state of art designs. As shown in Table 2, research efforts have been made for broad-band antenna(typical on order of 1GHz) as in [13][14][15][16][17]42], and for narrow-band antenna in [10,[39][40][41]43]. The dipole antenna is the focus of the work in [13,16], and the monopole in [11,41].…”