A Novel RF Energy Harvester

This paper presents a novel Radio Frequency (RF) Energy Harvester (EH) which can drive including but not limited to low power wireless sensors, implantable biomedical devices and Internet of Things (IoT) devices without the need for any external DC supply. The idea of this EH is based on combining RF rectifier circuit with the original concept of Dickson Charge Pump [1] where 180o out of phase clock signals are replaced by 180o out of phase RF signals. The complete EH needs a single RF input and converts to the desired boosted DC output voltage and drive a load. In order to verify the proof of concept a prototype is built on PCB and an LED is used as a load. Measured results show that 330µW of 900MHz RF input signal converts into 1.48V DC and which lights up an LED consuming about 22µW. These results show a potential future in implementing this EH in a fully integrated single-chip CMOS process.