Reverse Power Delivery Network for Wireless Power Transfer

Abstract

RF wireless power transfer and energy harvesting have gained a lot of interest nowadays due to its importance as a convenient feature in hand-held and Internet of Things devices. One bottleneck in both these applications is on converting the received RF energy to a regulated voltage level that a mixed signal load can use. A high-efficiency switching dc–dc converter, which switches at a much lower frequency than the RF frequency, is required for this purpose. This poses a unique design challenge in connecting these two very different frequency domains. This letter proposes an innovative solution for this problem, by demonstrating a new design method called a reverse power distribution network (PDN), a concept originating from the conventional processor PDN design. Experimental results are provided to support the proposed design approach.