Comparative study of RF energy harvesting rectifiers and proposal of output voltage universal curves for design guidline

Abstract

This paper studies rectifier circuits for RF energy harvesting based on Dickson charge pump. The best configuration of rectifiers is found that the body terminals of FETs are connected to their drains. Its performance is particularly superior when the load resistance is relatively higher. We also studied some derivative circuits, where the gate terminals are connected not to the own drains but the drains of the second neighbor FETs. In addition to this, we propose a new design guideline for determining the optimal rectifier parameters based on the output voltage universal curve. It helps us to find the optimum rectifier design parameters depending on the specification of the application targets.