High efficiency rectifier for RF energy harvesting in the GSM band

In this paper, a miniature RECtifying antENNA (rectenna) operating in the GSM band is designed and realized. The RF micro-generator consists of a simple rectifier circuit combined with a dipole antenna. The miniaturization of the circuit lies in avoiding the adaptation input filter and in optimizing the transmission lines by the gradient method search. The designed circuit is based on a Schenkel voltage doubler rectifier and Schottky diodes HSMS 2850 of AVAGO and is optimized through electromagnetic simulation software, Agilent ADS 2014 environment. Experimental results show an RF-DC conversion efficiency up to 40% with an output DC voltage of 1.8 V at 10 dBm of input power. A Wireless Power Transmission (WPT) experience demonstrates an average voltage of 22 mV over a distance of 3 m.