Ambient Radiofrequency Energy Mapping of Montreal for Far-Field Wireless Power Harvesting

This work summarizes an outdoor dynamic radiofrequency (RF) power density measurement on the island of Montreal, QC, Canada. Different from previous stationary measurements, our scheme captures ambient power density along major streets, roads, and highways, through a moving vehicle carrying equipment. This work focuses on the populated downtown area in the city of Montreal. Results show that GSM/LTE-850 band reserved for mobile communications has the highest power density in general within the spectrum of interest (400 MHz to 2700 MHz). Whereas, despite lower density, digital TV signals are distributed more evenly in this area. Based on this observation, this work then gives several suggestions on far-field wireless power harvesting (WPH) for smart city, IoT, and other metropolitan wireless applications.