Scalable RF Energy Harvesting

Abstract

This paper discusses harvesting of low-power density incident plane waves for electronic devices in environments where it is difficult or impossible to change batteries and where the exact locations of the energy sources are not known. As the incident power densities vary over time and space, distributed arrays of antennas with optimized power-management circuits are introduced to increase harvested power and efficiency. Scaling in array size, power, dc load, frequency, and gain is discussed through three example arrays: a dual industrial-scientific-medical band Yagi-Uda array with a low-power startup circuit; a narrowband 1.96-GHz dual-polarized patch rectenna array with a reconfigurable dc output network designed for harvesting base-station power; and a broadband dual-polarized 2-18-GHz array with multi-tone performance. The efficiency of rectification and power management is investigated for incident power densities in the 1-100-W/cm range.

Design of an Efficient Rectifier Circuit for RF Energy Harvesting System

“…The input impedance of the bridge rectifier is calculated. Two centre taps are added to the input network and the output network to find out the input impedance of the rectifier [15]. Now if the output load (R D ) is equally divided then there will be no current flow along the connection between the input and output centre taps.…”

A Study on a Gain-Enhanced Antenna for Energy Harvesting using Adaptive Particle Swarm Optimization

“…For example, this mean distance can be measured using an Euclidian metric (2) where N and M are the population size and the number of dimensions, respectively. …”

“…Sensor nodes and their link play an important role in monitoring and maintaining the quality of energy such as electric power. The sensor node is an electronic device that consumes the electric power for tasking, and its battery should be substituted on a regular basis [1][2][3]. Changing the battery of a sensor node is difficult job, because it is placed high above the ground or a high wall.…”

Rectifier Design Challenges for RF Wireless Power Transfer and Energy Harvesting Systems

“…One challenge in designing these arrays is the DC power combining mechanism of the rectifier outputs. Some works have covered this topic [16][17][18] showing results on how the optimum load varies depending of the type of DC power combination performed, series, parallel or combined.…”