RF Power Scavenger

Abstract

In this paper, the process of designing and building of energy harvesting device to collect "free" RF ambient energy is presented. This experiment was conducted for a bachelor’s degree Final Year Project at the University of Glasgow. The Power Scavenger device consists of a microstrip wideband antenna, a full wave rectifier and a capacitor as unit storage. The antenna has an omnidirectional radiation pattern in the horizontal plane and an -10-dB impedance bandwidth from 900 MHz to 2250 MHz. Measured results indicate energy harvesting up to 70 mV.