Open AccessAmbient RF energy harvesting trial in domestic settings
Author(s) -
Mimis Konstantinos,
Gibbins David,
Dumanli Sema,
Watkins Gavin Tomas
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
iet microwaves, antennas and propagation
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.555
H-Index - 69
eISSN - 1751-8733
pISSN - 1751-8725
DOI - 10.1049/iet-map.2014.0406
Subject(s) - omnidirectional antenna , energy harvesting , broadband , electrical engineering , antenna (radio) , radio frequency , power (physics) , telecommunications , mobile device , rf power amplifier , engineering , computer science , physics , amplifier , cmos , quantum mechanics , operating system
This study investigates the feasibility of ambient radio frequency (RF) energy harvesting for powering low‐power electronic devices, in domestic environments. An RF spectrum survey was carried out in a variety of locations around the city of Bristol, UK between 500 MHz and 6 GHz. Locations are limited to indoor residential environments, and as a comparison an office. The measurement setup consists of an omnidirectional, broadband, discone antenna and a handheld spectrum analyser. On the basis of the measured power consumption of a number of low‐power electronic devices and the analysed results, the required harvesting time to power each device is calculated. The results show that in order to harvest enough energy to power‐up a small calculator (2 μW) for 1 s, an antenna array covering 1.7–2.5 GHz with effective area of 1 m 2 requires on average about 10 min of harvesting.