A Sensitive Triple-Band Rectifier for Energy Harvesting Applications

Abstract

This paper presents a novel sensitive triple-band power rectifier for RF energy harvesting systems. The proposed rectifier can simultaneously harvest RF energy from GSM-900, GSM-1800, and Wi-Fi-2450 bands at relatively low and medium ambient power densities. Previously, a few multi-band rectennas have been reached a stable conversion efficiency overall frequency bands of interest because of the nonlinearity and the distinct input impedance of the rectifying circuit at these frequencies. The originality of this paper is on the improved impedance matching technique that enhances the efficiency and performance of the rectifier. The proposed high-efficiency triple-band rectifier consists of three parallel branches. Each branch comprises an input matching circuit designed to provide maximum RF power transferred to rectifying diodes, a single voltage doubler using Schottky diode HSMS-2852, and a DC-pass filter to smooth the DC output voltage. A prototype of the proposed rectifier circuit is fabricated and tested to verify its performance against the simulation results. With an optimum load resistance of 3.8 kΩ at -10 dBm input power level, the measured RF to DC conversion efficiency achieves 33.7%, 21.8%, and 20% at 0.9, 1.8 and 2.45 GHz respectively. The efficiency is above 46.5 % overall bands of interest under 0 dBm input power.