A Three-Branch RF Rectifier With Extended Input Power Range Based on Automatic Power Distribution Technique

This brief proposes a three-branch radio frequency (RF) rectifier that adopts a new circuit structure and automatic power distribution technique (APDT) to widen the range of input power. The proposed rectifier includes three branches that operate at different input power levels: low, medium, and high. The proposed APDT is designed according to the input impedance of each branch and distributes the input power automatically to the three branches. In this way, only one branch is active for a specific input power level and the power conversion efficiency (PCE) at the boundary of different power levels can be optimized. For validation, a three-branch rectifier working at 2.4 GHz was implemented and compared with other designs. The experiment results show that the measured PCE is greater than 50% within an input power range of −1.5 to 29 dBm, and the range of input power is widened to 30.5 dB. In addition, the input return loss $\boldsymbol {|S_{11}|}$ is less than −10 dB with a range of 38 dB.