Design and Performance Analysis of Cockcroft Voltage Doubler for RF Energy Harvesting Systems

Abstract

Energy harvesting is the transformation of the energy found in the surrounding environment into a usable electrical energy. The major element of Energy harvesting circuits is the rectifier. It works on converting RF energy found in available sources to DC power. This paper introduces an efficient multi-stage Cockcroft voltage multiplier design. The efficiency of the proposed design is investigated by varying the number of stages from 2 to 7-stages and examining different load resistance and three Schottky diode models (e.g., HSMS2822, HSMS285C and HSMS2852). Simulation results are obtained for all the circuits using Advanced Design System (ADS) 2019. This study highlights the specific input power range -20 dBm to 30 dBm with targeting frequency 2.45 GHz. Simulation results show that matching Cockcroft voltage multiplier design provides higher DC output voltage and higher efficiency compared to non-matching design at low input power.