Thin flexible RF Energy Harvesting rectenna surface with a large effective aperture for sub-µW/cm2 powering of wireless sensor nodes
Thin flexible RF Energy Harvesting rectenna surface with a large effective aperture for sub-µW/cm2 powering of wireless sensor nodes
The DC power collected by Radio Frequency Energy Harvesting (RFEH) absorbing surfaces is limited by their physical aperture. Here, a compact, conformable, and ultra-thin sub-1 GHz large-area RFEH surface is proposed based on electricallysmall (ka=0.58) “wire-type” rectenna elements, with an effective area exceeding its physical aperture size. Using optimized largesignal complex source tuning, the rectifiers achieve up to 36% measured Power Conversion Efficiency (PCE) at −20 dBm. The proposed 15 cm-diameter six-element array generates a 27.5 µW at 1 V output from a 0.17 µW/cm2 incident power density across a 40 kΩ load. Owing to its series connection, the voltage output is boosted and the load resistance-dependence is suppressed enabling over 60% of the maximum RF-to-DC PCE to be preserved for loads between 7 and 100 kΩ, with an area-normalized Figure-of-Merit nearly 100% higher than previous arrays. The proposed array is integrated with a commercial DC-DC converter and demonstrated powering a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) wireless sensor node from an unprecedented incident power density of 0.25 µW/cm2. A practical demonstration using a commercial 3 W 915 MHz Powercast source is presented showing an 11 m operation range with a 1 V output, and illustrating the impact of polarization mismatch on the proposed array.
Antenna arrays, Antennas, Aperture antennas, Dipole antennas, Radio frequency, Receiving antennas, Rectennas, battery-less sensor nodes, energy harvesting (EH) surface, metamaterials, metasurfaces, radio frequency identification (RFID), rectennas, rectifiers, wireless power transfer
4328-4338
Wagih, Mahmoud
7e7b16ba-0c64-4f95-bd3c-99064055f693
Beeby, Steve
ba565001-2812-4300-89f1-fe5a437ecb0d
3 August 2022
Wagih, Mahmoud
7e7b16ba-0c64-4f95-bd3c-99064055f693
Beeby, Steve
ba565001-2812-4300-89f1-fe5a437ecb0d
Wagih, Mahmoud and Beeby, Steve
(2022)
Thin flexible RF Energy Harvesting rectenna surface with a large effective aperture for sub-µW/cm2 powering of wireless sensor nodes.
IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques, 70 (9), .
(doi:10.1109/TMTT.2022.3192532).
Abstract
The DC power collected by Radio Frequency Energy Harvesting (RFEH) absorbing surfaces is limited by their physical aperture. Here, a compact, conformable, and ultra-thin sub-1 GHz large-area RFEH surface is proposed based on electricallysmall (ka=0.58) “wire-type” rectenna elements, with an effective area exceeding its physical aperture size. Using optimized largesignal complex source tuning, the rectifiers achieve up to 36% measured Power Conversion Efficiency (PCE) at −20 dBm. The proposed 15 cm-diameter six-element array generates a 27.5 µW at 1 V output from a 0.17 µW/cm2 incident power density across a 40 kΩ load. Owing to its series connection, the voltage output is boosted and the load resistance-dependence is suppressed enabling over 60% of the maximum RF-to-DC PCE to be preserved for loads between 7 and 100 kΩ, with an area-normalized Figure-of-Merit nearly 100% higher than previous arrays. The proposed array is integrated with a commercial DC-DC converter and demonstrated powering a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) wireless sensor node from an unprecedented incident power density of 0.25 µW/cm2. A practical demonstration using a commercial 3 W 915 MHz Powercast source is presented showing an 11 m operation range with a 1 V output, and illustrating the impact of polarization mismatch on the proposed array.
Text
Wagih22_TMTT_Large_Surface_RFEH
- Accepted Manuscript
More information
Accepted/In Press date: 3 June 2022
Published date: 3 August 2022
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Publisher Copyright:
IEEE
Keywords:
Antenna arrays, Antennas, Aperture antennas, Dipole antennas, Radio frequency, Receiving antennas, Rectennas, battery-less sensor nodes, energy harvesting (EH) surface, metamaterials, metasurfaces, radio frequency identification (RFID), rectennas, rectifiers, wireless power transfer
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 468275
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/468275
ISSN: 0018-9480
PURE UUID: dbc333d6-2b89-4153-ab92-8a806778dd1b
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Date deposited: 09 Aug 2022 16:40
Last modified: 19 Apr 2024 01:59
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Contributors
Author:
Mahmoud Wagih
Author:
Steve Beeby
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