Design and experiment of a rectenna array base on GaAs transistor for microwave power transmission

A large power rectenna array has been designed and tested in S-band for applications involving microwave wireless power transmission(WPT). The rectenna array consists of a 16-element array antenna and 16-element array rectifier based on GaAs. The structure is printed on F4B-2 substrate with the dielectric constant 2.55 and a thickness of 1mm. Conventional rectifying circuits use microwave schottky diode as the rectifying chip,but the output DC power of a single rectifying circuit still stays on mW levels. In this paper, based on the theoretical analysis of the rectifier circuit theory, a efficient antenna array using GaAs transistors chip is designed. The wireless power transmission (WPT) experiment using the rectenna array was conducted. As a result, the RPV motor output voltage is 4.6V and current is 3.1A, where the input power was 110W and the distance was 0.4m between transmitting antenna and the receiving antenna.