A 90° Twisted Quarter-Sectored Compact and Circularly Polarized DR-Rectenna for RF Energy Harvesting Applications

Abstract

Radio frequency (RF) energy harvesting is the most adopted technique for replacing conventional batteries. However, the available RF energy in the surrounding atmosphere is low and unstable, so the antenna with high gain and polarization-insensitive characteristics is desired to collect a massive amount of power from the low-density environment. A 90° twisted quarter sectored circularly polarized and high gain dielectric resonator antenna (DRA) operating within the 5.8 GHz Wi-Fi band, is investigated first time of its kind in this letter. A circular-shaped aperture coupled feeding approach is investigated for energizing the proposed antenna. A metallic strip is placed on the right face of the optimized DRA for creating circular polarization characteristics. The optimized antenna (0.67 λ×0.67 λ×0.029 λ) offers a gain value of 7.02 dBc at 5.8 GHz frequency. A shunt-diode rectifier circuit is implemented for rectification purposes. The power conversion efficiency achieved at the operating frequency is 72.5% for an input power level of 5.75 dBm.