The design of radio frequency energy harvesting and radio frequency-based wireless power transfer system for battery-less self-sustaining applications

Abstract

In this paper, the RF energy harvesting system and RF-based wireless power transfer system are proposed and designed for battery-less self-sustaining application. For energy harvesting, the designed antenna array improves the received RF power effectively and also can harvest RF energy in multi-frequency bands. For wireless power transfer, the proposed helical antenna realizes the system design in miniaturization. Subsequently, the T shape LC matching network are designed between the antenna and the rectifying circuit to obtain more power transmission. The measured results show that the proposed Wi-Fi rectifier and 433 MHz rectifier offer a maximum conversion efficiency of 66.8% and 76% in case of the input power is −3 dBm and 0 dBm, respectively. Finally, the performance of the RF-based wireless power transfer system and RF energy harvesting system are attested by experimentally measurement, the measured results indicate that these systems can be used to power electronic. K E Y W O R D S antenna array, low-power electronic devices, rectifier, RF energy harvesting, RFbased wireless power transfer 1 | INTRODUCTIONWith the explosive and rapid development of electronic technologies, various low-power integrated electronic devices, and miniaturized wireless systems have become ubiquitous throughout our daily lives. Meanwhile, numerous studies have been focused on the feasibility of powering these devices and systems through the harvesting of ambient radio frequency (RF) electromagnetic energy from some power sources such as mobile signal base station and Wi-Fi routers. 1-3 Besides, the idea of using wireless power transfer (WPT) technique for powering low-power and energy-constrained electronic devices has also become an upsurge of research. 4 It is significant that RF energy harvesting (EH) technique and WPT technique are the potential alternatives in generating clean and renewable power source, which definitely presents a promising scheme in battery-less self-sustaining applications for future.For RF EH technique, a rectenna (receiving antenna and rectifying circuit) is one of the most popular system components. Various designs have been investigated, such as multiband rectennas, 5-7 broadband rectennas, 8,9 and rectenna arrays. 10,11 The overall performance of a rectenna is normally determined by the performance of the designed receiving antenna and the RF-to-DC conversion efficiency of the rectifying circuit. Since the ambient RF sources are weak, a receiving antenna with high gain is required to improve input power levels, simultaneously, broadband means more RF energy can be accumulated from different frequency bands. Hence, antennas with high gain and broadband are greatly preferred. At present, the main challenge is how to improve the power conversion efficiency for such a nonlinear rectifying circuit at low-input power levels. This is because the nonlinear characteristics of rectifying diodes, the input impedance of a rectifying circuit varies with frequency and input power levels. Here

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