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Design of Rectifier at ISM Band for RF Energy Harvesting of Low Powers

Conference Paper · April 2019

DOI: 10.1109/ICCSP.2019.8697979

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 International Conference on Communication and Signal Processing, April 4-6, 2019, India

Design of Rectifier at ISM Band for RF Energy

Harvesting of Low Powers
B. Sri HarshaVardhan, Jagadeesh Chandra Prasad R and S. Natarajamani

Abstract—This paper presents the analysis of a single band The “Rectenna” is a combination of a Rectifier and
rectifier operating at 2.45 GHz. Harvesting energy in the lower Antenna. The three building blocks of this system are namely
powers is a common challenge. This work is targeted to Antenna, rectifier and impedance matching. The rectifier is
improve the efficiency in lower powers of -10dBm to 0dBm. A responsible in converting the RF power to DC. Thus, rectifier
voltage multiplier is considered as a rectifier here. The
is the key in the design of the harvester. Choosing the right
simulated rectifier gives an output voltage of 0.379 volts with a
power conversion efficiency of 28%. For 0 dBm input power, topology of the rectifier influences the power conversion
the output voltage is 1.45 volts and efficiency is 42%. efficiency. In [1] a half wave rectifier is designed. The
L-matching circuit using single stub matching technique is problem with that rectifier is it can harvest only the half
used as matching network. energy received, since here only one diode is used, which
can harvest either positive or negative cycles. A full wave
Index Terms—RF energy harvesting, Voltage multiplier, rectifier can be used to compensate. In [4] a full bridge
Output voltage and Power conversion efficiency. rectifier for operation in the frequency band of 900 MHz is
discussed. This design is efficiency below 10% at low input
I. INTRODUCTION power. While comparing with the voltage doubler this

T HE basic idea of energy harvesting is to convert the

available power from the RF source in space to DC. This
topology have some demerits. Though, the number of diodes
used for both the topologies are same there would be a
idea actually inspires some numerous possibilities. As with difference in the output voltages, thus difference in power
the evolution of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN), a new conversions. In ideal scenario the output voltage is expected
domain called IoT (Internet of Things) is emerged up. These to be two times the maximum voltage of input power. The
technologies mostly consist of sensors that require very less voltage doubler performs better than a bridge rectifier. In [5],
power. In most of the cases the location of these sensors are a voltage multiplier for dual band operation is discussed. The
remote, where human intervention is not possible. The usage idea of voltage multipliers is to using a number of voltage
of batteries, which are replaceable actually makes the life doublers at different stages. In [2] a voltage quadruple is
time of these sensors difficult. An energy harvester in that circuit designed, which consists two stages of voltage
domains, increase the life time of the sensors and also makes doubler giving an efficiency of 40% at 0 dBm input power.
the usage of batteries avoidable. In [1] such kind of harvester To improve the efficiency for low input power various
is discussed. The other application of this harvesting methods are being developed [6]-[10]. In [6] a voltage
technology comes for the field in medical. The medical multiplier with three stages for dual band operation is
implant and wearable devices do require replacement discussed. The power conversion efficiency achieved in [6]
batteries, but replacing the batteries again and again is not is around 30% at 2.45 GHz for 0dBm of input power. The
possible because causes health hazards to the patient. Most design of the harvester has two important criteria’s, one is to
importantly these sensors are placed underneath the skin of having a high power conversion efficiency at low input
the patient. So, every time the device need a battery powers and the other is to have minimum size as the
replacement the patient need to have a surgery. For the applications cannot afford bulk design. In this work the
application of this a system is discussed in [2]. In [3], need of rectifier is designed at 2.45 GHz. The design is especially
RF energy harvesting for Radio frequency identification aimed at improving the output voltages and power
(RFID) is discussed. The RFID has extended its application conversion efficiencies for lower input powers. Here, the
from merely identification to a sensing device. The extension input powers from -10dBm to 0dBm are considered to
of application for this system demands power, which can be improve the efficiency. In [6] a three stage voltage multiplier
effectively provided with the harvesting the RF power. As is used as rectifier, which would require six diodes. While, in
with the applications of RF energy harvesting the complexity this work a two stage multiplier is designed with only four
of the design as well increases. The major setback is the diodes to achieve efficiency over 40% in 0dBm input power.
available power from the RF source is usually very low, may The antenna is responsible for receiving the power from
be it would be in some μw to mw. The system, which is RF source. The rectifier is responsible to convert the RF
responsible for the RF energy harvesting is known as power to DC. The impedance matching is required for
“Rectenna”. maximum power conversion. The block diagram of Rectenna
is as shown in Fig. 1.
B. Sri Harsha Vardhan, Jagadeesh Chandra Prasad. R and S. In the section II the rectifier design is discussed along
Natarajamani are with the Department of Electronics and Communication with the diode specifications. The simulations results are
Engineering, Amirta School of Engineering, Coimbatore, Amirta Vishwa discussed in section III and the work is concluded in section
Vidyapeetham, India. e-mail: [email protected] IV.

978-1-5386-7595-3/19/$31.00 ©2019 IEEE

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 II. METHODOLOGY When the received power is negative the diode D2 gets
OFF and The diode D1 is ON. Thus the capacitor C2 now
This paper focuses on the design of the rectifier with the charges through diode D2. The voltage of the C2 is expected
impedance matching circuit. The rectifier circuit is used here to be double of the received voltage of the power but that is
is a voltage multiplier. only when the diode threshold voltage is negligible. In
practical the voltage would be slightly less than the expected.
Similarly, the second stage of the charge pump operates as
ANTENNA IMPEDANCE RECTIFIER the first stage and a voltage of four times the input voltage is
MATCHING expected at C4, which is connected to the load. The important
parameter to be considered here is Power conversion
Fig. 1. Block Diagram of Rectenna efficiency (PCE). The PCE is as given in equation (1)

The impedance matching circuit considered here is L- PCE (η) = * 100 (1)
section circuit. The simulations are carried out using
microwave simulation tool.
Where, PDC (Output Power) =

A. Diode specifications
The Schttoky diode of HSMS 285-C Avago technologies Vout = Output DC voltage (in volts)
is considered for the rectifier design. It has two detector PRF = Received RF Power (in watts)
diodes inside that are connected in series. Therefore, the RL = Load resistance (in ohms)
device is suitable for the design of voltage multiplier. The
The load resistance considered for this work is 5kΩ.
specifications of the diode are as shown in the Table I.

TABLE I C. Impedance matching

DIODE CHARACTERISTICS The rectifier is designed to give higher conversion
efficiencies at lower input powers. For this work power
Forward Breakdown Series Junction ranges from -10dBm to 0dBm are considered. The major
Voltage (Vf) voltage(VB) Resistance (RS) capacitance(Cj0) challenge in the impedance design comes from the
characteristics of the rectifier. The rectifier is made up of
125mv 3.8v 25ohms 0.18pf diodes, whose impedance is both frequency and power
dependent.
The rectifier in this work gives an input impedance of
B. Rectifier design
7-j*13 ohms at 2.45 GHz for input power of -10dBm as
A voltage multiplier is considered as the rectifier circuit shown in the Fig. 3. The smith chart gives the variation of
for this work. The received RF power is always under - the input impendence with the frequencies. The single stub
10dBm (i.e. 0.1mw). The advantage of using a voltage matching technique is used for impedance matching. The
multiplier is it is expected to give a voltage which is more characteristic impedance (Z0) here is 50 ohms.
than the received one at the output. For an example if a
voltage doubler is used the expected voltage at the output be
two times the voltage of the received power. The rectifier
here consists of two stages as shown in Fig. 2. Each stage
consists of a voltage doubler. When the received power is
positive the diode D2 gets ON and diode D1 would be in OFF
state.

Fig. 3. Smith chart result without impedance matching

The lumped components could be considered for the

impedance matching but they offer more losses at the
frequencies above 1GHz. So, the transmission lines are
considered for the matching here. The applications of
rectenna demand the minimum size possible, which couldn’t
be achieved by the complex matching techniques. To satisfy
these, an L-type matching network is designed for the
Fig. 2. Two stage voltage multiplier without impedance matching rectifier at 2.45GHz and it is shown in Fig. 4. For this

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matching two transmission lines TL1 and TL2 are used. The
impedance here is complex impedance. For maximum
power the impedance at the output should equal to the input
impedance. The transmission line TL1 is responsible to
match the real part of the impedance, while TL2 eliminates
the imaginary part present in the output impedance. TL2
Could be short circuit or open circuit based on the choice.
Consider the impedance of the rectifier circuit to be

ZL = (2)

Then the length ‘ ’ of the transmission line is given by

,
Fig. 5. Smith chart result with impedance matching

(3) After calculating the lengths the transmission lines are

converted into microstrip transmission equivalents.
After adding TL1 the impedance of the rectifier becomes Whose length and widths are W1 = 3.5mm, L1 = 8.5mm,
W2 = 3.5mm and L2 = 40mm. After the impedance matching
circuit included in the design the input impedance is
= = (4)
approximately equal to the characteristic impedance as
shown in the Fig. 5.
Thus the length ‘ ’ of the transmission of line is given by
III. SIMULATION RESULTS
= , for open stub
The Rogers 5880 substrate with h = 0.79 mm and =
2.2 is considered for this design. The voltage of rectifier is
= , for short stub (5) measured with varying input power for different loads. The
reflection coefficient (S11) is given in the Fig. 6. The
Where, reflection coefficient is achieved to be -14.5dB at 2.45GHz.
In this design the load is considered to be 5KΩ. This load is
= Wave length of the input considered for optimum power conversion efficiencies. The
GL and XL are Real and Imaginary parts of ZL. output voltages and efficiencies with variation of different
GL1 and BL1 are Real and Imaginary parts of YL1.
Y0 = Admittance of the characteristic impedance.
β = Phase Constant = 2π / λ.

Fig. 6. Reflection coefficient variation with the frequency

Fig. 4. Two stage voltage multiplier with impedance matching.

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 IV. CONCLUSION
In this work a single band rectifier operating at 2.45 GHz
is designed. A two stage Dickson charging pump is
considered for the rectifier design, which results an
efficiency of 42% at 0dBm and 28% at -10dBm input
power. A load of 5kΩ is considered for optimum efficiency.
In some papers, power consumptions for different sensor
nodes are tabulated. An RFID based sensor demands a
power of 7μw and temperature sensor needs 10μw of power.
This work gives an output power of 28μw at -10dBm and
400μw at 0dBm, which satisfies power hungriness of small
sensor nodes effectively with the low input power i.e., in the
Fig. 7. Output voltage variation with the Input power range between -10dBm to 0dBm. The higher output voltages
can be achieved with this rectifier but the power conversion
efficiency (η) decreases with the increment of the load
resistance. The designed rectifier gives a maximum voltage
of 1.6 volts at 0dBm.

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