3-D-Printed Dual-Band Rectenna System for Green IoT Application

Abstract

This paper describes the novel fully 3D-printed dual-band RF energy harvester suitable for wireless sensor network green IoT applications. The proposed energy harvesting system is composed of a dual-band circular omnidirectional monopole antenna array with a T-junction power divider, RF rectifier, and an impedance matching network. The circular monopole antenna array is conformed to a cylindrical substrate to achieve the compact system. The Villard multiplier-based rectifier has been used for the conversion of RF signal to DC voltage. The presented rectenna is fabricated using a 3D printable, biodegradable, conformal and an economical substrate. The test is performed in an RF ambient environment. The manufactured configuration obtained conversion efficiencies of 67.29% with output voltage of 1.39 V and 42.16% with output voltage of 1.1 V at 0 dBm RF input power in 2.4 GHz and 5.2 GHz frequency bands respectively. The proposed configuration’s simulated and measured results are in concordance with each other. The study emphasizes the potential of 3D-printed rectenna in terms of cost-effective prototyping.