RF Energy Harvesting with Dense Rectenna-Arrays Using Electrically Small Rectennas Suitable for IoT 5G Embedded Sensor Nodes

Abstract

This work presents a systematic study of dense rectenna-arrays using electrically small antennas and aims to the design of a high efficient for low power input (i.e., less than −20 dBm) and high sensitivity (i.e., less than 1 μW/cm²) RF energy harvester for IoT. Simulations shown that for power density of 0.1 μW/cm² the RF harvester of size λ×λ delivers dc power output of 20.8 μW, while is able to power continuously a backscatter sensor node with power consumption of 100 μW at 1.6 V for power density of 0.2577 μW/cm².