Design of Efficient Rectenna System for Higher Frequency Bands such as K-Band and Beyond

There is an increasing interest in energy harvesting using rectenna systems. This paper is concentrated on the analysis and design of rectenna systems for higher frequency bands such as K band and beyond. Despite the major benefits of wireless power transfer technologies, there are associated drawbacks which call for further research to improve upon the quality of existing knowledge in the field of wireless power transfer. It was realized that higher frequencies are attenuated more by the charging capacitance of the atmosphere. As a result, a lot of research in the design of rectenna systems are focused on the K-band (18-27GHz) and below the K-band frequency ranges. It was also realized that keeping all other factors constant, reduced wavelength, reduces the received power. These analyses show that higher frequencies affect the design of rectenna systems and their received power. As a result, these drawbacks serve as motivation for the design of optimal rectenna system to harvest maximum power at higher frequencies beyond the K band. In this paper, the rectenna was expected to have a narrow gap at higher frequency and improved efficiency. It was discovered that Q-factor is highly dependent on the center frequency of resonance and not the return loss and the Q-factor becomes fairly constant at frequencies beyond the X-band. Finally, of all the frequency bands investigated, the V-band had the best performance with a high return loss of-18.77 dB.