INDEX

Introduction RF Energy Harvesting Challenges with RF Energy Harvesting Micro strip antenna Rectification circuit Experimental results Conclusion

Introduction
Energy harvesting from the sources like vibration, ambient light, temperature gradient and ambient radio waves. Smart Building Integration. Wireless charging of Batteries. Powering electrical and electronic appliances which require small amount of power.

RF Energy Harvesting

Receive the power from RF Source and rectify the AC voltage in to DC through rectification circuit. Stepping up of the voltage level of the rectified output through dc dc converter. Feeding the stepped voltage to charge a battery through the charging circuit.

Challenges with RF Energy Harvesting

Available power varies with distance, direction and gain of the receiver antenna; therefore high gain antenna for all frequency bands would be required. Due to non-linear dependence of the rectifier impedance on the frequency and power, broadband impedance matching network is essential for maximum power transfer. High efficiency of RF-DC conversion and low power DC-DC converter is required.

Sources of RF Energy for harvesting

FM Radio systems ( 88 108 MHz, tens of KW ) TV Transmission ( 180 220 MHz, tens of KW ) Cell Tower Transmission ( 800 1800 MHz, 10 20 KW ) Wi-Fi ( 2.45 GHz, 5.8 GHz) AM Transmission ( 540 1600 KHz, few hundred KW) Mobile phones ( 1W to 2W ) Out of which cell towers can be considered as renewable source as they transmit whole 24 hours of the day.

Microstrip antenna design

Proposed antenna for RF Energy Harvesting is broadband electromagnetically coupled Square microstrip antenna ( SMSA ). Stacked multi-resonator configuration with bottom patch fed and top patch coupled electromagnetically. Two 2mm thick aluminum radiating patches electromagnetically coupled through an air gap of 1.3cm.

 Lengths of square patches are 15.2cm and 12.8cm respectively with ground plane is 24cmx24cm. Total height of the antenna is 2.6 cm and designed for GSM 900 band.

VSWR of Electromagnetically Coupled SMSA

Input Impedance of Electromagnetically Coupled SMSA

Simulated gain plot of electromagnetically coupled SMSA

Rectification using Schottky diodes

A voltage doubler is designed with silicon based Schottky diode having threshold voltage of 230mV and diode capacitance of .26pF. At microwave frequency, the non-linear capacitance of the diode governs the maximum power transfer to the load and amplitude of the rectified output as input impedance of the rectifier changes with the frequency.

 Single stage voltage doubler is used for rectenna measurements inside lab and near cell towers as the power levels are higher at these places. Six stage voltage doubler is implemented to measure the power dependence of the rectifier for low power levels as the voltage measured at single stage is very low.

Single stage voltage doubler

Six stage voltage doubler

 Input impedance of the diode changes with the input power as the dc operating point in a I-V curve moves in a non linear fashion.

Input impedance and VSWR plot of Input impedance and VSWR plot six stage rectifier for an input power of six stage rectifier for an input power of 10dBm of -10dBm

 Large variation of input impedance with input power and frequency makes designing a broadband conjugate matching network complex. Hence a resistive impedance matching is used to allow maximum power transfer.

The value of Rmatch depends on the input impedance of the antenna. This approach provides an approximate and simple matching between antenna and filter.

Power (dB) 15 10 5 0

6th stage voltage (V) 4.83 2.32 .95 .30

5th stage voltage (V) 3.89 2.08 .95 .31

4th stage voltage (V) 3.92 2.10 .95 .31

2nd stage voltage (V) 3.63 2.0 .96 .33

1st stage voltage (V) 2.53 1.40 .68 .25

VOLTAGE AT VARIOUS STAGES OF SIX STAGE RECTIFIER WITH 2.2KOHM LOAD AT 900 MHZ FOR DIFFERENT INPUT POWER LEVELS

Distance (dB)

Voltage (V) no Voltage (V) load 100K load

60
80 100 120 140 160 180

3.45
2.31 1.67 1.48 1.14 .83 .58

3.38
2.27 1.52 1.34 1.02 .68 .46

Power (dB) -1 -2 -5

6th stage voltage (V) 1.34 1.10 .60

5th stage voltage (V) .88 .72 .39

4th stage voltage (V) .65 .54 .32

-10

.21

.14

.16

VOLTAGES AT 4TH - 6TH STAGES OF SIX STAGE VOLTAGE DOUBLER FOR LOW INPUT POWER LEVELS FOR NO LOAD AT 900 MHz

RESULTS OF RECTENNA WITH SINGLE STAGE VOLTAGE DOUBLER AT 900MHz WITH 17dBm TRANSMITTED POWER

Measurement at actual site

Voltage levels are measured at actual site consisting of transmission cell towers at IIT Bombay using fabricated electromagnetically coupled SMSA and single stage voltage doubler. At 50m voltage obtained was .87V and can be stepped up using a boost converter. At 10m a voltage of 2.78V is obtained. This large voltage can be used too charge a battery.

Conclusion
A RF Energy Harvesting system is designed with a high gain electromagnetically coupled antenna is developed. Silicon based schottky diode single stage and six stage rectifier are also designed. Benefits of Harvesting energy from cell towers are: Provide an alternative source of energy Protect people living in the vicinity of the tower from radiation health hazards.

References
1. 2. N. Kumar and G. Kumar, Biological Effects of Cell Tower Radiation on Human Body, IEEE Conf. ISMOT, pp.1365-1368, Dec. 2009. Z. W. Sim, R. Shuttleworth, and B. Grieve Investigation of PCB Microstrip patch receiving antenna for outdoor RF energy harvesting in wireless sensor networks, IEEE Conf. Antenna and Propagation Conference, Loughborough, pp.129-132, Nov. 2009 A.C. Patel, et al, Power Harvesting for Low Power Wireless Sensor Networks. IEEE Conf. Antenna and Propagation Conference, Loughborough, pp.633-636, Nov. 2009 V.Rizzoli, et al, CAD Multi-Resonator rectenna for micro power generation. Proc. of 4th European Microwave Conference, pp.1684168, Sep. 2009. J.A. Hagetry, et al, Recycling Ambient Microwave Energy With BroadBand Rectenna Arrays. IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory. Tech vol. 52, no 3, pp.1014-1024, Mar. 2004 G. Kumar and K. P. Ray Broadband Microstrip Antenna, Artech House, USA 2003. IE3D software from Zealand ,USA

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