Polarization Reconfigurable Broadband Rectenna With Tunable Matching Network for Microwave Power Transmission

A broadband polarization reconfigurable rectenna is proposed, which can operate in three polarization modes. The receiving antenna of the rectenna is a polarization reconfigurable planar monopole antenna. By installing switches on the feeding network, the antenna can switch to receive electromagnetic (EM) waves with different polarizations, including linear polarization (LP), right-hand and left-hand circular polarizations (RHCP/LHCP). To achieve stable conversion efficiency of the rectenna (n
_r
) in all the modes within a wide frequency band, a tunable matching network is inserted between the rectifying circuit and the antenna. The measured n
_r
changes from 23.8% to 31.9% in the LP mode within 5.1-5.8 GHz and from 22.7% to 24.5% in the CP modes over 5.8-6 GHz. Compared to rectennas with conventional broadband matching network, the proposed rectenna exhibits more stable conversion efficiency.