Design and implementation of a bioinspired leaf shaped hybrid rectenna as a green energy manufacturing concept

Abstract

In this communication, the novel low cost hybrid energy harvester combining rectifying antenna with the solar cell for feeding the low power energy systems are reported. The bioinspired leaf shaped monopole antenna is designed to work in the most used communication frequency bands such as GSM-1800, UMTS-2100, WIFI-2.45 and LTE-2.65 GHz for the energy harvesting purposes and microstrip low pass filter is also added on the feeding line for the second harmonic rejection for increasing the efficiency of the harvester. The solar cell is placed on the ground plane of the designed leaf shaped antenna for using volumetric space efficiently and obtain a more compact system. The implemented prototype harvester generate 76 mV, 120 mV and 90 mV when the same type receiver antenna feed from the 25 dBm power from the RF source located at a distance of 1 m which satisfies the far field condition of the antenna without solar cell at the 2.15 GHz, 2.45 GHz and 2.65 GHz frequency bands, respectively. After the illumination of its solar cell component with 165 lux, the total harvested voltages are measured as 150 mV, 170 mV and 190 mV at the same frequency bands, respectively.