Efficient rectenna with wide dynamic input power range for 900 MHz wireless power transfer applications

This work demonstrates the design of a rectenna to operate over wide dynamic input power range. It utilizes an adaptive reconfigurable rectifier to overcome the issue of early breakdown voltage in conventional rectifiers. A depletion-mode field-effect transistor has been introduced to operate as a switch and compensate at low and high input power levels for the rectifier. In addition, a meandered monopole antenna has been exploited to collect RF energy. The rectifier design achieves 40% of RF-DC power conversion efficiency over a wide dynamic input power range from −17 dBm to 27 dBm and the antenna exhibits a directivity of 1.92 dBi as well as a return loss of −33 dB. The rectenna is designed to operate in the 900 MHz ISM band and suitable for Wireless Power Transfer (WPT) applications.