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Design and Development of the Efficient

RF Energy Harvesting System

P. Kalpana Devi and T. Yuvaraj

Abstract In today’s life, mobile usage causes an increase in the radiation levels
in the atmosphere which affects all the living and exponentially increases the risk
of diseases. Energy harvesting means acquiring signals and gathering energy from
various sources which are deemed to be unused for any applications. These kinds
of remaining energies are generally released as wasted potential to the environment.
But the wasted potential can be used to provide power for the wireless sensors.
The battery source is normally used for powering up these devices. To avoid the
expensive repeated battery replacement in wireless devices, energy harvesting system
is proposed to receive the energy from RF source, and the power is transferred from
the antenna to the rectifier circuit. The impedance matching circuit is required to
transfer the maximum power gain from antenna tower to the successive stages. The
rectifier circuit convert the incoming RF signal to DC signal for efficient rectification
to improve the power level which is further fed into the battery. This process in turn
reduces the atmospheric radiation level and to maintain the sustainable environment.

Keywords Rectenna · Super capacitor · Energy harvesting · Rectifier · Energy

source · Environment

1 Introduction

In recent years, wireless devices are used in most of the applications. This increases
the radiation level in the environment as shown in Fig. 1. This in turn creates the
need of increase in energy storage batteries for wireless devices [1]. Hence, research
was diversified in reducing the consumption of devices and the process of recycling
the wasted energy in the environment. The charging of wireless devices specifically

P. Kalpana Devi (B)

Veltech Rangarajan Dr. Sagunthala R&D Institute of Science and Technology, Chennai, India
e-mail: drkalpanadevip@veltech.edu.in
T. Yuvaraj
Prathyusha Engineering College, Thiruvallur, India

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 525
S. Shakya et al. (eds.), Proceedings of Second International Conference on Sustainable
Expert Systems, Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems 351,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-7657-4_42
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526 P. Kalpana Devi and T. Yuvaraj

Fig. 1 Intensity of radiation levels across the world

wireless sensor nodes which are located in remote places remains a major challenge
in communication.
For the increase in use of wireless devices, energy requirement for charging these
devices is also increased. The rectification of RF energy in to DC signal was proposed
in 1950s for powering the helicopter and solar power satellite system [2].
In general, 98% of total power can be captured by the antenna from mobile
frequency bands and 2% contributed as FM, Wifi WiMax power bands. Hence, it is
proposed to design a rectenna in PCB with miniaturized to get operated in multiple
bands for receiving RF energy. Energy scavenging mechanisms are used to recharge
batteries either through solar energy or vibration harvesting techniques.
Efficient energy management methodologies at the sensor nodes are designed
to extend the network lifetime as maximum. Energy is a limited resource in every
wireless device [1], compared to the regular task complexity in sensor networks [2],
the sensor nodes are very small in size to place the high-capacity power backups.

2 Energy Efficient RF Harvesting System

RF energy harvesting system includes impedance matching section, rectification and

energy storage load as shown in Fig. 2. The received signal is set to matched with
the rest of the blocks in the system by matched transmission stub. This effective
matching can reduce the losses and further conditioned by multiplier circuit [3]. The
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Design and Development of the Efficient RF Energy … 527

Fig. 2 Block diagram of RF

energy harvesting system

output voltage from multiplier to be maintained by its peak values by using surface
mount RF schottky barrier diodes in different combination for multiple frequencies.
Double-stage rectifier circuit with super capacitors can store the energy which can
powering the sensor nodes in the system.
Circularly Polarized Rectenna: The antenna required to be multiband such that it
can receive the RF energy present in all frequency sources in the environment [3].
The reason is that the power levels are in the range of microwatts but more energy is
needed for powering up the sensor nodes [4].
Adaptive Matching stub design: Adaptive matching stub design is achieved by
connecting the microstrip line in a specific pattern for impedance matching. This in
turn processes the rectifier to operate at multiple bands.
Adaptive reconfigurable rectifier: Depletion-mode field-effect transistor switch
can make the rectifier to adapt to the required input power level, it will enhance the
RF-to-DC power conversion to extend the operating power range significantly when
compared to the existing rectifiers.
Rectenna: The incident RF signal fall on antenna, followed by rectifier circuit. This
RF wave is converted into DC power by the diode-based converter [5]. A high-
frequency filter performs the impedance matching between the antenna and the diode
at 2.45 GHz for optimum power conversion factor. The DC–DC converter filter
smoothens the output DC.

3 Proposed RF Energy Harvesting System—R-Ger

The proposed block diagram deals with for the effecient energy harvesting mecha-
nism for acquiring the energy from most freely available RF source in environment.
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528 P. Kalpana Devi and T. Yuvaraj

The impedance matching is implemented to improve the gain from an incoming

RF signal. Further RF signal received is converted into DC signal that is fed into
battery for an efficient rectification which improves the output power as represented
in Fig. 3 which consists of antenna, matching circuit, rectifier, charging circuit and
battery. The proposed system design improves the overall performance of RF energy
harvesting system.

Antenna
In general, the radio frequency that is commonly available in the range of 2.4 GHz.
Hence, the antenna design is preferred in this frequency band. Microstrip antenna
is designed with CST tool in the range of S-band. Slots various shapes of slots are
selected for opereating in various resonant frequency in L band range [6].
S-Parameter describes the input–output relationship between ports in an electrical
system. Electrical properties such as VSWR, reflection coeffecient, gain, return loss
can be simulated for determining the component characteristics (Fig. 4).

Matching Circuit
The impedance matching charcteristics are designed with the circuit of LC compo-
nents. The performance is analyzed suitable for RF energy harvesting that is most
opted for known probability density function. Then, the simulated graph shows that
280 mV matching network gives the best power conversion effeciency system, and
the high value of output harvested power is obtained as shown in Figs. 5 and 6.
RF to DC converter: The RF signal received is acting as a source in RF to DC
converter. The RF power is transferred from the rectenna which is so called the
combination of rectifier and antenna and impedance matching is performed to provide
more power gain from source and the rectifier circuit. The efficient rectification
improves the output power which will be stored in the battery. Hence, the RF energy
from the radiation is converted to dc for optimum power level. Super capacitors will
be an alternate source for batteries for energy storage applications (Fig. 7).

DC to DC buck boost converter

A self oscillating DC–DC converter is required to convert the energy harvested from
a radio-frequency rectifier into a charge sources. A linear regulator is used to scale

Fig. 3 RF energy harvesting

system
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Design and Development of the Efficient RF Energy … 529

(a)

(b)

(c)

Fig. 4 a Design of microstrip antenna. b S-Parameter. c VSWR

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530 P. Kalpana Devi and T. Yuvaraj

Fig. 5 280 V matching

circuit

Fig. 6 Matching circuit PCE

Fig. 7 Equivalent circuit

model

the voltage supply for a suitable value of C used for sensing and conversion circuit
in wireless sensor nodes.
The oscillator is designed with JFET to amplify the gate input control signal.
2-coupled inductors and gate source capacitor comprised the oscillator return loop.
Voltage value can be raised by step up transformer from very low-source voltage level.
The rectifier is preferred to convert gate oscillating voltage. If the state oscillating
voltage is greater than the diode threshold voltage, then the diode will be in ON
condition, and load is supplied with input voltage (Fig. 8).
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Design and Development of the Efficient RF Energy … 531

Fig. 8 Block diagram of the buck-boost converter

4 Measurement of RF Energy Harvesting System

for the Optimized Design

RF energy harvesting is a predominant technology since it is an alternative source

of energy for sensor nodes. The optimized RF harvesting system design involves
the efficiencies of indivdual blocks and together constitute the integrated design
describes the overall efficiency. As per the requirement of operation, the antenna
design to be matched with gain, frequency and size. The rectifier element is to
be selected appopriate DC to DC converter and corresponding power conversion
efficiency factor to be analyzed. Measured received power error are measured with
respect to distance for the operating frequency of 2.45 GHz free unlicensed ISM
band is shown in Fig. 9.
In general, energy calculated is extremely low from available RF electromagnetic
sources. The measured value states that the power calculated is in the range of
microwatts (Fig. 10).

5 Conclusion

Systematic methodology for designing of RF energy harvesting circuits to maximize

the harvested energy for a defined range of input power levels is proposed in this
paper. The defined system consists of antenna, matching circuit, rectifier circuit,
DC to DC converters. The converted energy value is stored in battery for future
applications rather than the radiation of RF signal wasted in the environment.
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532 P. Kalpana Devi and T. Yuvaraj

Fig. 9 DC to DC converter simulation graph

Fig. 10 Received power

versus distance
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Design and Development of the Efficient RF Energy … 533

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