Open AccessAn efficient small size electromagnetic energy harvesting sensor for low‐DC‐power applications
Author(s) -
Meddour Fayçal,
Dibi Zohir
Publication year - 2017
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.2016.0304
Subject(s) - energy harvesting , electrical engineering , power (physics) , rectenna , electronic engineering , energy (signal processing) , computer science , materials science , physics , engineering , quantum mechanics
An efficient small size electromagnetic energy harvesting sensor for low‐DC‐power applications is proposed. The sensor consists of two main parts: a dual polarisation square patch antenna used to collect the RF energy at a central frequency of 2.45 GHz, and two voltage doublers rectifier circuit for the RF‐to‐DC conversion. The overall size of the design is 50 × 50 × 6.2 mm 3 . Firstly, the antenna is designed using high‐frequency structure simulator software; followed by the design of the rectifier circuit in advanced design system. After simulations, a sensor prototype is fabricated using F4B as the antenna substrate. Measurements show that the sensor achieves a comparatively high maximum measured efficiency of 41% for a power level of −10 dBm. The sensor has a simple structure, it is compact sized, light weight, and presents a high RF‐to‐DC conversion efficiency for low‐RF‐power levels which can be used to charge different low‐DC‐power devices.