Shared-Aperture Patch Antenna for Energy Harvesting and Wireless Communications

A shared-aperture patch antenna for simultaneous RF energy harvesting and wireless communications is proposed. Diodes are integrated into the antenna to convert RF energy into DC power and the diode-to-antenna matching is done through antenna geometry optimization. As a result, the design requires no additional rectifier circuit and matching network. The communications mode is designed to be orthogonally polarized to the energy harvesting mode to improve the isolation.