Electrically Small, Single-Substrate Huygens Dipole Rectenna for Ultracompact Wireless Power Transfer Applications

Abstract

An electrically small, single-substrate Huygens dipole rectenna with exceptional physical and radiation performance characteristics is reported. A highly efficient rectifier circuit is seamlessly integrated with an ultrathin, electrically small, Huygens dipole antenna (HDA) on a single piece of Rogers 5880 substrate. It consists of two metamaterial-inspired near-field resonant parasitic (NFRP) elements, an Egyptian axe dipole (EAD) and a capacitively loaded loop (CLL) that are etched on the top and bottom metallization layers of the substrate, respectively. A printed receiving dipole is amalgamated tightly with the rectifier on the CLL layer. This ultracompact rectenna system has a large electromagnetic wave capture capability and achieves nearly complete conversion of the incident energy into dc power. The HDA prototype has a realized gain of 4.6 dBi and a half power beamwidth (HPBW) greater than 130°. The entire rectenna is electrically small with ka =0.98, is low cost and easy to fabricate, and has a measured 88% ac-to-dc conversion efficiency. The developed rectenna system is the ideal candidate for ultracompact far-field wireless power transfer (WPT) applications.