Rectenna Design for Radio Frequency Wireless Energy Harvesting

Abstract

The concept of wireless power transmission (WPT) has been introduced for nearly a century. Some of the achievements made so far have made energy harvesting a reality, capable of providing alternative sources of energy. This paper provides a summary of RF energy harvesting techniques to serve as a guide for designing RF energy harvesting units. Since energy harvesting circuits are designed to operate at relatively small voltages and currents, they rely on the latest electrical technology for high efficiency. Thus, thorough analysis and discussions of the various designs and trade-offs between them are included. Also, we introduce most of the recent applications of radio frequency (RF) energy harvesting. Also in this work, a rectenna, which is a combination between an antenna and a rectifier, with the purpose of energy harvesting, is designed and verified through simulation. The rectenna consists of two main components: the first is a micro strip patch antenna and the second is a rectifying circuit. The micro strip antenna gather the wireless power, then the received RF power is rectified to DC using the rectifier. In this work, we will design and simulate the micro strip antenna using HFSS software, and the rectifier circuit using ADS software.