Highly Efficient Planar Metasurface Rectenna

Abstract

Simplicity and higher DC efficiency are essential factors to be considered to enhance the overall performance of a rectenna system for microwave electromagnetic energy harvesting and Wireless Power Transfer. To that extent, this letter presents a novel and simple design of a rectenna having high radiation to DC efficiency. The proposed planar rectenna system consists of an 8× 8 planar metasurface array with a rectification circuit occupying a supercell of 2× 2 while the other cells are terminated with the optimal load resistance. On account of its wide input impedance response, the diode is mounted right at the feed of the metasurface cell, avoiding the use of a matching network between the metasurface cell and the diode. The output DC power of the 4 unit cells within the rectified 2× 2 supercell was connected in both series and parallel to study the ability of the rectenna to configure the total output current and voltage. The numerical and experimental results show that the proposed metasurface is capable of capturing the incident electromagnetic waves with radiation to dc conversion efficiencies exceeding 80%.