Design of Dual-Band Rectifier Circuit for RF Energy Harvesting Using Double-Gate Graphene Nanoribbon (GNR) Vertical Tunnel FET

This work discusses the RF energy harvesting system, where the RF rectifier circuit design plays a significant role. RF rectifier circuits can convert the radio frequency into desired power supply for various wireless, sensor, and small portable devices. The requirement for a long-live battery unit to power electronic devices is increasing significantly; RF is one of the sources of energy that can be harvested due to its flexible accessibility without any cost. Various RF systems transmit a large number of RF signals in the cities. Rectifier circuits with a high-power conversion efficiency (PCE) are essential for energy harvesting applications. This article explores the capability of GNR-Tunnel Field Effect Transistor (TFET)-based rectifiers to achieve a high conversion efficiency at an extremely low ambient RF signal range. Two different rectifier topologies have four TFETs (2-nTFET and 2-pTFET), such as conventional fully (FX) cross-coupled rectifiers and self-biased (SB) cross-coupled rectifiers have been compared. The proposed dual-band rectifier circuit is designed to operate at two different frequency bands such as 900 MHz and 2.45 GHz. The simulation results show the maximum conversion efficiency, RF input power (PRF,IN) of −13 dBm for two different frequencies 900 MHz/2.45 GHz are converted into 1.47 V/1.43 V output DC voltage and can attain maximum PCE of 86.23%/81.60% at 50
$\text{K}\Omega $
load. For a frequency of 900 MHz and 2.45 GHz, respectively, the achieved PCE is more significant by 4.4% and 12.7% than the other reported work. It demonstrates the GNR-TFET rectifier’s superiority at extracting energy from RF signals in the environment for wireless electronic applications.