Design and Implementation of a Dual-Band Rectifier Antenna for Efficient RF Energy Harvesting in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSN) have observed an exponential amount of growth in the recent past. The energy associated with the sensor nodes is limited which is a major bottleneck for the WSN technologies. The sensor nodes in WSN need to be continuously charged and thus an efficient RF energy harvesting needs to be explored. In the proposed design, a dual-band rectifier antenna for RF energy harvesting has been developed for 900 MHz and 2.45 GHz frequencies as RF energy is mainly available in the range of 900 MHz–2.45 GHz. The antenna proposed is microstrip U slot antenna with S11 parameter below −10 dB at 2.45 GHz and 0.8 GHz with a gain of 5.1 dBi and 10.1 dBi at 900 MHz and 2.45 GHz, respectively. The circuit for the rectifier uses Schottky Diode HSMS-285C for the purpose of rectification. The rectifier circuit used is a Greinacher Voltage Multiplier. Impedance Matching of the rectifier has been processed out to improve the performance of the circuit. Simulations of rectifier have been done on Advanced Design System (ADS) Software. The conversion efficiency at 900 MHz and 2.45 GHz is found to be 78.7% and 51.768%, respectively. The proposed design can find its uses in large number of energy harvesting applications under wireless power transmission such as powering of Wireless Sensor Nodes.