Self-Adaptive Rectenna with High Efficiency over a Wide Dynamic Range for RF Energy Harvesting Applications

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This paper presents a novel simple adaptive and efficient rectenna with automatic power distribution to achieve high radio frequency-direct current (RF-DC) power conversion efficiency (PCE) over a wide range of RF input power. This design employs two rectifier paths operating at low and high-power levels, respectively. Automatic power distribution method exploits the power-dependent input impedance of the rectifier and routes the RF input power into the assigned path according to the input power level. A distinctive enhancement in the rectifier dynamic range is achieved when dividing the high path power equally into two or more parallel diode cells, which helps the high path to camouflage the diode breakdown voltage in case of high input power level. The proposed adaptive design applies two different rectifier topologies, one by using shunt diode topology and the other by using voltage doubler topology at 2.45 GHz. Simulated PCE of this work is kept above 50% over a range of 25.1 dBm from -5.7 to 19.4 dBm of RF input power using shunt diode topology and over a range of 30 dBm from -6.3 to 23.7 dBm of RF input power using voltage doubler topology.