Integrated Solar Mesh Dipole Antenna Based Energy Harvesting System

This paper presents a Sunlight-Radio Frequency (RF) energy harvesting system built on Solar Panel Mesh Dipole Antenna integration. The dipole antenna mesh is mounted on the surface of the solar panel at the separations between the cells. This configuration maximizes the absorption of both solar and RF energies. Further, the multiple mesh antennas are integrated vertically to increase the RF harvested power. Each antenna output is connected to a six-stage RF-Voltage Doubler Rectifier (RF-VDR) circuit to convert the RF signal to a direct current (DC) and added to the solar panel DC output. This paper involves the design analysis of the antenna parameters, the integration process, and the design of the RF matching circuit. Prototype tests show that the proposed mesh dipole antenna has 83% efficiency. This is better than earlier similar designs published. From previous designs, the measured RF to DC conversion efficiency (CE) of the VDR circuit was merely 62% when the RF input equals −14 dBm. Moreover, the solar panel efficiency has been enhanced by 41.3 % when the input RF power density equals 49.16 mW/m
²
. Finally, the results proved that the proposed solar antenna system achieves 28.5 % power CE and outperforms the others that use transparent patch antennas.