RF energy harvester design using a dual-band rectenna for ultra-low-power electronic systems

The advent of Radio Frequency (RF) energy harvesting technology has become a viable solution as an energy source for low-power electronic devices, including Internet of Things (IoT), wireless sensors, and microcontroller unit (MCU) applications. This article presents a compact dual-band RF energy harvester incorporating a novel Defected Ground Structure (DGS) based monopole antenna. It is integrated with a Pi-type rectifier. The proposed rectenna operates at two bands of 0.9 GHz and 1.8 GHz, corresponding to the GSM frequency bands, which are abundantly present in urban environments. The system achieves 68.94 % peak power conversion efficiency (PCE) for −5 dBm input. Even with a lower input power of −10 dBm, the measured PCE values are 54.74 % at 0.9 GHz and 52.22 % at 1.8 GHz, demonstrating the high sensitivity and efficiency of the rectification circuit under low-power conditions. Furthermore, experimental evaluations of the rectenna successfully generated a DC voltage of 0.606 V at −11.2 dBm in an anechoic chamber and 0.50 V at −13.1 dBm in an outdoor environment. It establishes the system’s effectiveness for real-world scenarios. This design demonstrates superior performance and introduces a novel approach tailored for practical energy harvesting applications.