A High-Power Capacity Transistor-Based Rectifier With Wide Input Power Range

Abstract

This letter proposes a methodology for realizing the rectifier with a wide radio frequency (RF) input power range for large power capacity applications. The comprehensive analysis is given in this letter under the condition of class-F operation mode. The optimum conduction angle of the transistor corresponding to the maximum input power dynamic range is determined. Theoretical rectification efficiency of over 60% can be obtained in a 30 dB in-depth input power level. For validation, an RF-dc rectifier operating at 2.45 GHz is designed based on the GaN transistor. Measurements demonstrate that the rectification efficiency of between 60.4% and 82.1% is realized with a fixed dc load of 115 <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\Omega $</tex-math> </inline-formula> when the RF input power is from 18 to 43 dBm. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is the first realization of a transistor-based RF-dc rectifier with a large input dynamic range of over 25 dB. The proposed rectifier shows great potential to be used in future high-power wireless power transfer (WPT) applications.