A dual-band ambient energy harvesting rectenna design for wireless power communications

Abstract

In this paper, a long-range dual-band rectenna for harvesting ambient radio frequency (RF) energy from GSM/900 and GSM/1800 is presented. Theoretical analysis of the proposed dual-band impedance matching network (IMN) is conducted using a modified $\Pi $ -section matching network (MN). The RF-rectifier is integrated with a dual-band inverted-F monopole antenna. The rectenna circuit complexity is minimized by introducing a dual-band IMN, which plays a significant role in improving the harvester RF-to-dc power conversion efficiency (PCE). Measurement results of the proposed design achieved a peak RF-to-dc PCE of 12.93% and 8.0% for an input power of -30 dBm at 0.9 GHz, and 1.8 GHz, respectively. The RF harvester ambiance measurement attained an output dc voltage of 0.374 V. The circuit generates 0.747 V using a low-powered bq25504-674 evaluation module (EVM). Thus, adequate energy management of the proposed rectenna can be used to power many low-powered devices from the harvested ambient RF energy.