Efficiency Improvement of RF Energy Transfer by a Modified Voltage Multiplier RF DC Converter

Radio Frequency (RF) energy transfer is getting increasingly importance in new generations of wireless sensor networks and this trend is tremendously supported by the modern trends to Internet of things (IoT). This promising technology enables proactive energy replenishment for wireless devices. With RF energy, transmission long distances between the energy source and the receiver can be overbridged. The main challenge thereby is the power conversion efficiency from a low level RF input power to a Direct Current (DC) voltage which is able to supply the mobile system. For this purpose, a novel approach for RF DC conversion is proposed. It consists of a modified voltage multiplier RF DC converter circuit by incorporating an inductor at the input of the circuit, which generates an induced voltage able to boost the output circuit and improve the conversion efficiency. Analytical analysis of the novel approach has been carried out to determine the optimal value of the inductor to maximize the output power. The experimental investigations show that the proposed solution is able to improve significantly both the output voltage and the power conversion efficiency, compared to the state of the art, and this especially at low input power ranges, which are often the case. At -10 dBm input power, the modified voltage multiplier RF DC converter circuit can reach 1.71 V output voltage and 49.21 % power conversion efficiency for, respectively, 500 k? and 10 k? resistive loads. In order to validate the new proposal for the RF transfer system experimentally, microstrip meander line antennas and mirostrip patch antenna arrays are designed for different ISM bands, where relevant requirements for RF energy transfer are respected. For each antenna a modified voltage multiplier RF DC converter circuit has been applied and the system is tuned to the corresponding resonant frequency to avoid mismatching. In this investigation several scenarios have been addressed, such as RF transmission energy, RF energy harvesting in Global System for Mobile (GSM) bands and Wireless Local Area Networks (WLAN) band are developed. Field test results show high performances of experimental results in comparison to the state of the art.