High Efficiency 2.
45 GHz Low Power Hybrid
Junction Rectifier for RF Energy Harvesting
Asmaa Sedeek1*, Emad Tammam1**, El-Sayed Hasaneen2
1
Electrical Engineering Dept., Faculty of Engineering, Minia University, Minia, Egypt
2
Electrical Engineering Dept., Faculty of Engineering, Aswan University, Aswan, Egypt
* **
asmaa.sedeek@s-mu.edu.eg
Abstract—This paper presents a 2.45 GHz low power rectifier
utilizing a 180° hybrid junction for radio frequency (RF) energy
harvesting. This rectifier provides enhanced efficiency at low
input power levels compared to the typical Greinacher voltage
doubler rectifier. The proposed rectifier consists - in addition to
the 180o hybrid combiner – of two rectifying branches and two
output ports. Each rectifying branch is based on the Greinacher
voltage doubler configuration but contains only one rectifying
diode for each branch. Using of only one diode instead of two
provides significant improvement in the efficiency of the RF
rectifier. The proposed rectifier configuration has been simulated
using advanced design system (ADS) and its performance has
been investigated and compared to the ordinary voltage doubler
rectifier. The proposed rectifier provides maximum power
conversion efficiency (PCE) of 70 % compared to maximum PCE
of 51% for the ordinary voltage doubler circuit. Moreover, the
proposed rectifier topology provides sensible enhancement of the
efficiency at the lower input power levels.
Keywords—RF energy harvesting; RF rectifier; 180o hybrid-
based rectifier; schottky diode; power conversion efficiency.
I. INTRODUCTION
Radio frequency (RF) energy harvesting has been a fast
growing research topic since the first wireless energy
transmission was proposed and demonstrated in the 1890’s by
Nikola Tesla [1]. Recently the development of wireless
charging and energy harvesting draws the interest of the
researchers due to its valuable advantages such as the
unlimited lifetime which mean no need for replacement
(unlike batteries). Also, It is green source of energy which
does not have any depositions to pollute the environment as in
the case of batteries [2], [3].
The ambient RF energy harvesting system was designed to
harvest and recycle the energy for many applications such as
battery chargers, sensor devices and portable low power
devices. Even though the ambient RF energy is widely
broadcasted with many systems, the power density is
extremely low in free space. Therefore, the design of a high
performance energy harvesting system is a challenging
requirement for supporting the small available power densities
[1].
One of the most common methods to harvest the wireless
energy is to use the rectenna which is a combination of
a rectifier and an antenna. The wireless RF energy is
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c IEEE
emad.tammam@mu.edu.eg
collected by the antenna which delivers the collected energy
to the rectifying circuit through the matching network. The
rectifying diodes convert the received wireless RF energy into
DC power suitable for charging a battery or operating a low
power device directly. A low-pass filter will be required to
match the load with the rectifier and block the high order
harmonics generated by the diode in order to achieve
high power conversion efficiency (PCE) which is the most
important parameter of such a device [3].
Most of the published work have achieved the maximum
PCE of the rectifier at relatively high input power levels
(above 10 dBm) while the ambient RF energies are available
in much lower levels in the environment [4]-[7]. The most
adopted rectifier configuration in the literature [1], [8] is the
Greinacher voltage doubler shown in Fig. 1. However, the
voltage drop biasing required for the operation of the two
diodes has a serious effect on the rectifier’s PCE especially at
the lower input power levels.
Fig. 1. Voltage-doubler rectifier configuration.
It is reported in [3] that one of the basic approaches used to
increase the efficiency at the low microwave power density is
to develop a new rectifying circuit that reduces the forward
biasing voltage required for the operation of the rectifying
diode to increase the efficiency at a weak microwave input.
In this paper, a modified rectifier configuration based on a
180° hybrid power combiner is proposed. The 180° hybrid
power combiner is used to combine the power of two
rectifying branches; each rectifying branch is a voltage
doubler rectifier of only one diode instead of two. This in turn
improves the overall efficiency of the rectifier especially at the
lower input power levels.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows: The design of
the rectifier with modified hybrid junction is introduced in
Section 2. Performance of the rectifier is investigated through
the presentation of the simulation results in Section 3. Section
4 concludes the main results of the paper.
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 II. RECTIFIER DESIGN AND ANALYSIS
The proposed rectifier topology is composed of a 180º
hybrid junction with two modified voltage doubler rectifying
branches. In this section we present the configuration of the
proposed rectifier in addition to the principle of operation.
A. The 180o Hybrid Junction Design
The 180º hybrid junction is a four-port network with 180º
phase shift between the two output ports as shown in Fig. 2.
As a combiner, with input signals applied at ports 2 and 3, the
sum of the inputs will be formed at port 1, while the difference
will be formed at port 4. Hence, ports 1 and 4 are referred to
as the sum and difference ports, respectively.
The 180º hybrid power combiner was designed firstly to
operate at 2.45 GHz while its ports were matched to a 50 ȍ
impedance to accept the RF signals of the rectifying branches.
It can be designed in several forms; here we used the ring
hybrid form which can be easily constructed in microstrip
planar form as shown in Fig. 2(a). The designed 180º hybrid
network was simulated using Advanced Design System (ADS)
on an FR4 substrate of dielectric constant İr = 4.4 and height h
= 1.6 mm. The S-parameters of the designed 180o hybrid are
shown in Fig. 3.
(a) (b)
Fig. 2. The 180o hybrid junction; (a) Ring 180o hybrid form, (b) ADS design
of the 180o hybrid junction.
Fig. 3. S-parameters of the simulated 180o hybrid junction.
148 International Japan-Africa Conference on Electronics, Communications and Computations (JAC-ECC)
B. Configuration of the 180o Hybrid-Based Rectifier
Structure of the proposed hybrid-based rectifier is shown in
Fig. 4. As shown in figure, the two input ports of the 180o
hybrid junction are connected to symmetrical pair of rectifying
branches. Each one of the rectifying branches serves as a
voltage multiplier network, but with only one diode instead of
the two diodes of the common voltage doubler configuration.
Each rectifying branch consists of a 10 pF capacitor for
voltage clamping in addition to a schottky diode for
rectification. Schottky diode HSMS2850 was adopted in the
design of the proposed rectifier circuit because of its low
forward voltage drop and very fast switching speed. The low
forward voltage drop is a very important requirement for the
design of RF rectifier as the RF energy exists in very low
levels in the environment.The used microwave Schottky
detector HSMS2850 model has junction capacitance of 0.18
pF, series resistance of 25 ȍ, and saturation current of 3e-6 A.
These characteristics enable a very low threshold voltage [9].
Advanced Design System besides Harmonic Balance (HB)
Simulator are used to design and simulate the rectifier circuit
while the Smith chart tool of ADS is utilized to design and
generate the matching circuit which matches the rectifier to
the 50 Ÿ input line. The return loss at the input ports of the
designed 180o hybrid-based rectifier is shown in Fig. 5. As it
is shown in the figure, the two ports are matched properly at
2.45 GHz frequency. The output DC voltage of the 180o
hybrid-based rectifier is extracted at the two output ports of
the 180o hybrid on a 470 ȍ load impedance for each port.
The impedance matching networks at the input ports of the
180o hybrid-based rectifier are designed using microstrip
transmission line stubs as shown in Fig. 5 to match the circuit
at 2.45 GHz frequency. Dimensions of the used stubs are
summarized in Table I. In order to reduce the ripples and
deliver DC power, a passive low pass filter is arranged at each
output port using a shunt capacitor of 15 pF connected with
the load.
TABLE I. DIMENSIONS OF THE MATCHING NETWORKS STUBS
Stub name Length (mm) Width (mm)
TL5 18.57 4.12
TL6 16.76 2.87
TL7 12.6 3.65
TL8 18.45 3.07
Fig. 4. Configuration of the proposed 180o hybrid-based RF rectifier.

(a)
(b)
Fig. 5. Return loss at the inputs of the two rectifying branches; (a) The
right-hand port, (b) The left-hand port.
C. Operation of the 180o Hybrid-Based Rectifier
The basic idea behind the proposal of 180o hybrid-based
rectifier is that in the ordinary voltage doubler rectifier circuit,
the RF signal has to pass through two diodes to obtain the
output DC signal. If we are able to use only one diode the
efficiency of the rectifier will be improved seriously because
we save the power required for the biasing of the second
diode. If we look at the configuration of the voltage doubler
rectifier shown in Fig. 1, we observe that the second diode is
used for the blocking of the residual negative part of the
clamped RF signal. Hence, the peak of the sinusoidal voltage
signals on the two capacitors Vc1 and Vc2 can be defined as
V c 1 = V p(in) - V th(D1)
V C2 = 2V p(in) - V th(D1) - V th(D2)
Where Vp(in) is the peak voltage of the input RF signal and
Vth(D1) and Vth(D2) are the forward voltage drop across D1 and
D2 respectively. Equation (2) shows that the output voltage is
reduced by the two forward bias voltages of the two diodes.
The operation of the proposed 180o hybrid-based rectifier
topology relies on the 180o out-of-phase combining of the
clamped RF signals of the two rectifying branches which
ensures the removal of the residual negative part of the two
clamped signals. If the first input RF signal at the right-hand
rectifying branch of the rectifier shown in Fig. 4 is ȣ1(t) where
ȣ1(t) = Vp sin (Ȧt + ĭ) (3)
International Japan-Africa Conference on Electronics, Communications and Computations (JAC-ECC)
where Vp is the peak of the input RF signal, Ȧ is its angular
frequency and ĭ is the phase angle. The voltage at the top of
the diode D1 of Fig. 4 is the clamped version of the input RF
signal and can be written as:
ȣc1(t) = Vp sin (Ȧt + ĭ) + Vp – Vth (4)
Where Vth is the forward bias voltage of the diode D1and is
assumed to equal that of D2. The same voltage value is
constructed on the top of the diode D2 of the left-hand
rectifying branch. So, the 180o out-of-phase combining of the
two rectifying branches signals – assuming lossless hybrid
junction – can be given as
Vout = Vp sin (Ȧt + ĭ) + Vp – Vth
+ Vp sin (Ȧt + ĭ + 180o) + Vp – Vth (5)
Then,
Vout = 2Vp – 2Vth (6)
which is pure DC value compared to the expression of
Equation (2) which represents a clamped sinusoidal signal.
III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
To investigate the performance of the proposed 108o hybrid-
based rectifier, the rectifier configuration was simulated using
ADS simulator. The two rectifying branches were fed by two
RF power sources while the output was observed at the output
ports of the 180o hybrid junction. The spectrum of the output
signals at one of the output ports of the rectifier is depicted in
Fig. 6 for an input RF power of 0 dBm at the inputs of the
rectifying branches. The spectrum of the second output port
signal is approximately the same. As shown in Fig. 6, the
extracted energy at the output ports is approximately pure DC
except for some minor higher-order harmonics at the multiples
of the operation frequency which appear in very small values.
(1)
(2)
Fig. 6. Spectrum of the output signal at one of the output ports of the proposed
rectifier.
The output DC voltage of port 1 of the proposed rectifier
was simulated at different values of the input RF power from
-20 dBm to 20 dBm. As shown in Fig. 7, the output DC
voltage of the proposed rectifier increases with the increase of
the RF input power until a saturation value of about 1.63 V is
reached. The saturation of the DC voltage is due the reverse
149
breakdown voltage of the used Schottky diode. The output DC
voltage of port 2 has the same value.
Fig. 7. Output DC voltage at one of the output ports of the proposed rectifier.
To analyze the efficiency of the different rectifier
topologies, the overall system efficiency (ߟ଴ ) is defined as
[10]:
Output DC power
η0 =
Total input RF power
2 [3] J. Zhang, Rectennas for Wireless Energy Harvesting, PhD thesis,
VDC
= (7)
R L Pin
Where ୧୬ is the total input RF power from the two input
ports of the rectifier circuit and ୈେ is the total DC output
voltage on the load resistors.
The overall efficiency of the proposed 180o hybrid-based
rectifier compared to that of the common voltage doubler
rectifier is shown in Fig. 8. It is clearly observed that the
efficiency of the proposed rectifier configuration is
significantly improved to achieve PCE of about 70 % with
respect to about 51% for the common voltage doubler.
Moreover, the proposed rectifier improves the PCE at the
lower input power levels.
Fig. 8. Simulated overall efficiency of the proposed rectifier compared to that
of the voltage doubler rectifier.
150 International Japan-Africa Conference on Electronics, Communications and Computations (JAC-ECC)
IV. CONCLUSION
In this paper, a new RF rectifier configuration based on 180o
hybrid junction is proposed. The proposed rectifier topology
has the ability of fully rectifying the RF signal using only one
rectifying diode in the path of the signal. The proposed
rectifier configuration is simulated and the simulation results
are analyzed to investigate the rectifier performance. The
comparison of the performance of the proposed rectifier and
the voltage doubler rectifier demonstrates that the proposed
RF rectifier is more efficient. It provides about 20 %
improvement in the PCE with respect to the voltage doubler
rectifier. The more important advantage of the proposed
rectifier configuration is its enhanced efficiency at the lower
input power levels.
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