Design of an Efficient Rectifier Circuit for RF Energy

Harvesting System
Parna Kundu (datta), Juin Acharjee, Kaushik Mandal

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Parna Kundu (datta), Juin Acharjee, Kaushik Mandal. Design of an Efficient Rectifier Circuit for RF
Energy Harvesting System. International Journal of Advanced Engineering and Management, Tech-
nical and Scientific Publisher, 2017, 2 (4), pp.94-97. �10.24999/IJOAEM/02040024�. �hal-01592486�

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 International Journal of Advanced Engineering and Management
Vol. 2, No. 4, pp. 94-97, 2017
https://ijoaem.org/00204-24

Design of an Efficient Rectifier Circuit for

RF Energy Harvesting System
Parna Kundu (Datta), Juin Acharjee and Kaushik Mandal

Abstract antenna for energy harvesting applications [2], array with a

reconfigurable dc output network for harvesting base-station
An efficient rectifier system along with an impedance
power [3], optimal design of an antenna array for energy
matching network is proposed in this article. Impedance
harvesting [4], and enhanced RF power harvesting [5] are
matching network is designed using two microstrip lines.
reported for RF energy harvesting system design. A
Rectifier system for better RF to DC conversion is designed
differential microstrip antenna [6] with improved gain for RF
using a bridge rectifier. The proposed rectifier system
energy harvesting was presented by Arrawatia et al. The
provides a maximum efficiency of 50%. The impedance
antenna was designed and fabricated for GSM900 band (890-
matching network improves the overall system performances
960 MHz) with a gain of 8.5 dBi and peak efficiency of
significantly. The circuit simulator ADS 2015 is used for this
65.3%. The same group of researcher also proposed a broad
system design. Performances of the proposed system are
band bent triangular omnidirectional antenna [7] for RF
analysed using simulation results only. This proposed rectifier
energy harvesting. The antenna has a bandwidth of 850MHz
system along with the impedance matching network can be
to 1.94GHz with a peak efficiency of 60%. S. Ghosh et al.
useful for the design of an efficient RF energy harvesting
proposed a circularly polarized efficient multiband microstrip
system.
antenna [8] to gather the electromagnetic energy which are
Keywords: radiated from the target cell towers in the GSM and CDMA
Impedance matching network and rectifier circuit; bands [10]. By using a schottky diodes these energy converted
Full wave bridge rectifier; in into DC power [11]. General conversion efficiency of the
Energy converter; traditional rectenna system was 23% for frequency band of
ADS-2015 circuit simulator; GSM 900 [12]. Rectification of the RF energy received by the
antenna is very much important in the rectenna design. The
GSM 900.
efficiency of an energy harvesting system depends on RF to
DC conversion efficiency of the rectifier and receiving
I. INTRODUCTION antenna design.
E-ecently, radio frequency (RF) energy harvesting using
This paper presents the design of an efficient impedance
microstrip antenna has gained a great research interest for low
matching network for 2.5 GHz and a rectifier circuit which
power applications. It consists of microwave antenna that
can be used in rectenna [14] systems for higher RF to DC
collect ambient electromagnetic energy from the surrounding
conversion efficiency. These circuits are designed using ADS
environment and a rectifier circuit which convert the collected
2015. Efficiency of the rectifier is calculated and the
RF energy to dc power. Since available energy can be received
performance of the system is compared to understand the
from any direction, an omnidirectional antenna with high gain
effect of an impedance matching network.
is required to receive both horizontally and vertically
polarized waves. Antenna can be designed for single band as
well as multiple band reception. This basic multiband antenna II. DESIGN OF PROPOSED IMPEDANCE M ATCHING
with higher gain can be used in a RF energy harvesting system NETWORK AND RECTIFIER CIRCUIT
to collect ambient RF energy from the surrounding
environment/BTS towers. An impedance matching network is The antenna for the energy harvesting system is considered
essential for the efficient transmission of received power to the to be operated at 2.5 GHz with output impedance of 50 ohm.
rectifier stage. After that the RF signals is converted in to DC The input impedance of the rectifier is to be matched with the
using highly efficient rectifier circuits. This is illustrated using output impedance of the antenna to maximize the power
the following simplified block diagram Fig. 1. transfer and minimize the signal reflection from the load. A
Bridge rectifier is used for RF to DC conversion. The input
impedance of the bridge rectifier is calculated. Two centre
taps are added to the input network and the output network to
find out the input impedance of the rectifier [15]. Now if the
output load (RD) is equally divided then there will be no
current flow along the connection between the input and
output centre taps. That means the alternating voltages V1 and
Fig. 1. Block diagram of a RF energy harvesting system.
V2 must be symmetric about a DC offset at half the output
Rectenna, short for rectifier and antenna was first designed voltage.
by Brown using dipole antenna [1]. A fractal multiband
If, Vin = Vp sinφ
 International Journal of Advanced Engineering and Management
ijoaem.org
then V1 = ( Vm + Vp sinφ) / 2 .........................................(1)
and V2 = ( Vm - Vp sinφ) / 2 Schematic circuit connectivity for the rectifier system along
with the impedance matching network is presented in the Fig.
These two voltages are identical apart from 180 0 phase difference 4.
and the AC component in each case is half of the input voltage. It
appears that the bridge circuit splits the input voltage into two halves
in antiphase. These two halves are then simultaneously applied to a
pair of voltage dobler. Since there is no overall voltage multiplication

Fig.4. Schematic circuit connectivity for the rectifying system

along with the impedance matching network.

Calculation of Rectifier Efficiency

The antenna is directly connected with the simply bridge
Fig. 2. General circuit diagram of the Bridge rectifier (a)
rectifier circuit with impedance matching. The efficiency of
Full wave bridge rectifier, (b) Full wave bridge rectifier
the RF to DC conversion is defined as the ratio of the output
(adding centre taps).
dc power (Pout) and input RF power(Pin).
The input impedance is The efficiency of the rectifier (η) can be calculated by
Rzin = ( RD + 2Rdiode ) / 2 .............................................. (2) 𝑃
η = 𝑜𝑢𝑡 .........................................(3)
In this paper RD is considered as 500 ohm and CD = 0.5pF. 𝑃 𝑖𝑛
A Schottky diode (HSMS8101) having cut-in voltage 0.25 V Where, Pout = V2out,DC / Rload .................(4)
and dynamic resistance 9.64 ohm is used as rectifying element Vout = Output DC Voltage
in the bridge rectifier circuit. Now, from equation 2the Rload = Resistive load present at the output
calculated input impedance (Rzin) of the rectifier is 259.64 Efficiency of the rectifier is calculated for different input
ohm. power and presented in the Table 1.
The impedance matching circuit is designed by adding two Table 1. Calculated Efficiency of the Bridge Rectifier
microstrip lines having W1 = 0.257045mm, L1 = 15.6270mm , Input Input Vout(Volt) Rectifier
andW2 = 0.257045mm, L2 = 4.944530mm. Power(dBm) Power(mWatt) Efficiency
(%)
III. RESULT AND ANALYSIS 0 1 0.131 3.43
The S11 characteristic of the matching network is shown in Fig. 5 3.16 0.502 15.94
3. As per the requirement it is matched at the 2,5 GHz to 7 5.012 0.742 21.96
transfer maximum power from the antenna to the load. 10 10 1.23 30.26
12 15.84 1.68 35.63
15 31.62 2.58 42.10
17 50.12 3.39 45.86
20 100 5.01 50.20
23 199.52 6.94 48.28

The rectifier along with impedance matching network is

highly efficient with maximum efficiency of 50.20% for the
20dBm input power. The proposed rectifier system is able to
produce sufficient DC voltage form low incident RF power.
This simple rectifier system is very efficient for design of a RF
energy harvesting system. The input power versus efficiency
variation is shown in Fig. 5.
Fig. 3. Effect of Reflection Coefficient (S11) at 2.5GHz
Parna Kundu (Datta), Juin Acharjee and Kaushik Mandal, “Design of an Efficient Rectifier Circuit for RF Energy Harvesting System,” International Journal of
Advanced Engineering and Management, Vol. 2, No. 4, pp. 94-97, 2017.
 International Journal of Advanced Engineering and Management
ijoaem.org
60 energy harvesting. IEEE Antennas and Wireless
Efficiency(%) Propagation Letters, 15, 36-39.
40 [5] Taghadosi, M., Albasha, L., Qaddoumi, N., & Ali, M.
(2015). Miniaturised printed elliptical nested fractal
20 multiband antenna for energy harvesting applications. IET
Microwaves, Antennas & Propagation, 9(10), 1045-1053.
0 [6] Ghosh, S., & Chakrabarty, A. (2016, January). Green
0 10 20 30 energy harvesting from ambient RF radiation.
Input Power (dBm) In Microelectronics, Computing and Communications
(MicroCom), 2016 International Conference on (pp. 1-4).
Fig.5. Efficiency of the bridge rectifier for different input IEEE.
power [7] Olgun, U., Chen, C. C., & Volakis, J. L. (2011).
A comparative study of the rectifier performance, with and Investigation of rectenna array configurations for
without impedance matching network is shown in Fig.6. It is enhanced RF power harvesting. IEEE Antennas and
observed that due to impedance matching the efficiency of RF Wireless Propagation Letters, 10, 262-265.
to DC conversion is so high.
[8] Brown, W. C. (1984). The history of power transmission
by radio waves. IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory
and Techniques, 32(9), 1230-1242.
[9] Reddy, N. K., Hazra, A. & Sukhadeve, V. R. (2017). A
Compact Elliptical Microstrip Patch Antenna for Future
5G Mobile Wireless Communication. Transactions on
Engineering and Applied Sciences, 1(1), 1-4.
[10] Acharjee, J., Kumar, R. L., Mandal, K., Mandal, S. K.
(2017). Design of Matched Printed Monopole Antenna
with Enhanced Bandwidth for GSM900 Band
Application. Transactions on Engineering and Applied
Sciences, 1(1), 5-8.
[11] Karthaus, U., & Fischer, M. (2003). Fully integrated
passive UHF RFID transponder IC with 16.7-/spl mu/W
minimum RF input power. IEEE Journal of Solid-State
Circuits, 38(10), 1602-1608.
Fig.6. Output voltage versus input power.
[12] Costanzo, A., Romani, A., Masotti, D., Arbizzani, N., &
IV CONCLUSION Rizzoli, V. (2012). RF/baseband co-design of switching
receivers for multiband microwave energy
An efficient rectifier system for RF energy harvesting system
harvesting. Sensors and Actuators A: Physical, 179, 158-
is designed using ADS-2015 circuit simulator. It consists of an
impedance matching network t and a bridge rectifier. Schottky 168.
diode is used as a rectifying element as it has low forward [13] Rizzoli, V., Costanzo, A., Masotti, D., & Donzelli, F.
voltage drop and a very fast switching speed. Impedance (2010). Integration of numerical and field-theoretical
matching network effectively improves the system techniques in the design of single-and multi-band
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harvesting and transport for wireless sensor network
applications: Principles and requirements. Proceedings of Authors Details:
the IEEE, 101(6), 1410-1423. Parna Kundu (Datta)
ECE, NSHM Knowledge Campus ,Durgapur
[4] Arrawatia, M., Baghini, M. S., & Kumar, G. (2016).
e-mail: Parna.kundu@nshm.com
Broadband bent triangular omnidirectional antenna for RF
Parna Kundu (Datta), Juin Acharjee and Kaushik Mandal, “Design of an Efficient Rectifier Circuit for RF Energy Harvesting System,” International Journal of
Advanced Engineering and Management, Vol. 2, No. 4, pp. 94-97, 2017.
 International Journal of Advanced Engineering and Management
ijoaem.org
Juin Acharjee
ECE, NSHM Knowledge Campus ,Durgapur
e-mail: Juin.Acharjee@nshm.com
Kaushik Mandal
Institute of Radio Physics & Electronics,Calcutta University,
Kolkata
e-mail: kaushikrpe@gmail.com

Parna Kundu (Datta), Juin Acharjee and Kaushik Mandal, “Design of an Efficient Rectifier Circuit for RF Energy Harvesting System,” International Journal of
Advanced Engineering and Management, Vol. 2, No. 4, pp. 94-97, 2017.