Integrated RF Energy Harvesting and Power Conversion Circuits: A Review and Roadmap for Wireless-Powered System-on-Chip (SoCs)

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) increases the demand for battery-less devices, driving the development of Radio Frequency (RF) energy harvesting and wireless power transfer (WPT) technologies, with RF identification (RFID) being an exemplar of mass-manufacturable RF-powered devices. RF-DC rectifiers are the core enabler, and also bottleneck, for sensitive, long-range wireless-powered systems. Unlike discrete-component rectifiers, fully-integrated RFIC and MMIC rectifiers offer advantages in form factor, scalability, and system-on-chip (SoC) co-integration capabilities. Through SoC integration, WPT can be adopted more broadly in applications such as biomedical implants, wearable sensors, and IoT nodes. This comprehensive review covers CMOS-based integrated rectifier designs, with a roadmap to SoC and system integration from dies, packages, to systems. Rectifier topologies are categorized into three major groups: voltage doublers, cross-coupled rectifiers, and reversed amplifier-inspired architectures, with the self-compensation techniques further discussed as possible performance enhancement strategies. A dataset of over 120 published rectifiers is analyzed to extract performance trends over frequency, process node, power sensitivity, efficiency, and circuit integration approaches. In addition, practical applications in both IoT systems and RFID-based platforms are examined to demonstrate the functional advantages of integration. The review highlights the evolution of rectifier performance metrics over time and provides insights into trade-offs among efficiency, sensitivity, and power dynamic range. As energy-autonomous electronics continue to expand across domains, integrated rectifiers are expected to remain a foundational building block in future low-power, wireless-powered systems.