An Efficient Broadband Slotted Rectenna for Wireless Power Transfer at LTE Band

A compact and broadband rectifying antenna (rectenna) which consists of a novel slotted antenna and an efficient rectifying circuit is presented for wireless power transfer at LTE-2300/2500 band. Three different broadband antennas have been investigated and compared. It is found that the newly designed antenna which combines the annular slot radiation patch and a slotted ground plane (GP) has the widest bandwidth and the best matching characteristic. A new broadband dual-stub matching network is proposed to maximize the transmission of wireless power and enhance the reliability of the rectifier when the input power and load varies. In addition, the ground of the rectifier is directly connected to the GP of the antenna for compactness and low energy loss. The proposed designs have been simulated, fabricated, and tested. The results indicate that the proposed receiving antenna performs well at LTE band with a wide bandwidth from 2 to 3.1 GHz. The maximum efficiency of the proposed rectenna reaches 70% at 2.5 GHz under the input power of 5 dBm. Furthermore, the rectenna remains at a relatively efficient power conversion when the load varies in a wide range from 2 to 20 kΩ under different low input power, which is of great significance when the ambient radio frequency(F) signal is weak. Therefore, the rectenna is potentially applicable to a wide range of low-power electronic devices by harvesting RF energy at LTE band.