A Miniature Rectifier Design for Radio Frequency Energy Harvesting Applied at 2.45 GHz

In this paper, a method of designing highly efficient miniature rectenna (rectifying antenna) is proposed. The design method is based on a judicious choice of the rectifying diode. Depending on the electrical internal elements of a Schottky diode, the RF/DC conversion efficiency is defined, and, by comparing four commonly used diodes, the HSMS 2850 diode manufactured by AVAGO demonstrates having the best conversion efficiency in the ISM band centralized at 2.45 GHz. A rectifier circuit based on a Latour voltage doubler is then designed. The designed rectifier is optimized to achieve good performance at 2.45 GHz. The simulated results are validated experimentally, and an RF/DC conversion efficiency of 27 % is achieved at 10 dBm of input power without the use of the RF matching filter. A satisfactory output DC voltage level of 1. 3 V capable of powering most of the radio modules of the currently marketed sensor nodes is also achieved.