A Novel Antenna Matching Technique for Joint Wireless Communication and Energy Harvesting

Summary form only given. Merging the fields of digital communication, energy harvesting (EH), sensing, and RF system design is fundamental for achieving the best trade-off between the competing performance metrics. Matching the Low-Noise Amplifier (LNA) or the energy harvester input to the antenna source impedance is critical for maximizing the achievable rate or the power transfer efficiency. Therefore, this maximization needs to be optimized using joint performance metrics. In this paper, we introduce an optimized antenna matching technique for joint wireless communication and energy harvesting. The enhanced antenna matching process integrates the information theoretic capacity equation and Maxwell's equations. The resulting system substantially improves the trade-off between the harvested power and spectral efficiency based on our joint optimization approach. We design a 24 x 26 m2 compact wideband elliptical planar antenna using an FR4 substrate of 1.6mm thickness and a 4.4 dielectric constant. We optimize a lossless common matching network that matches the designed antenna to a LNA and an EH Schottky diode. The common matching network constitutes an ideal transformer in parallel with an inductor. The designed wideband antenna operates between 5.5-8 GHz.