Design and Development of Dual–Band Multi–Stage

RF Energy Harvesting Circuit for Low Power

Applications

Ankush Jolly, Mansi Peer, Vivek Ashok Bohara, Siddhant Verma

Wirocomm Research Group,
Department of Electronics and Communication,
IIIT-Delhi, India
Email: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
Abstract—This paper presents the design and development
of a dual–band multi–stage rectifier aimed at converting far
field RF energy into DC voltage at low received power. The
designed RF energy harvester consists of a dual–band matching
network followed by a 3–stage rectifier which has been designed
to work in GSM 900 MHz and Wi–Fi/Wireless LAN (WLAN)
bands. It provides a peak conversion efficiency of 80% at 8
dBm received RF power at 915 MHz. The experimental results
also show that the proposed dual–band rectifier can harness
twice amount of power than single band 915 MHz rectifier. This
work further utilizes the above circuit to obtain preliminary
results of RF energy harvesting through mobile phones. Mobile
phones from two different manufacturers have been used to Fig. 1: Block diagram of an RF energy harvester
evaluate the output DC voltage levels obtained through energy
harvesting. Measurements were taken during call–establishment
phase as well as during call–conversation phase. It was shown
that depending on the manufacturer, it is possible to obtain peak Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have gained a consid-
average voltages of 1 volt and 0.25 volt in call–establishment phase
erable popularity nowadays due to their low cost and low
and call–conversation phase respectively. The prototype has been
fabricated on RT/Duroid 5880 substrate and all the simulations power requirements. As a consequence, there is a large scale
have been performed on Advanced Design System (ADS). utilization of these sensor networks in many industrial and
healthcare applications such as structural health monitoring,
Keywords—Output DC voltage, power conversion efficiency, forest fire detection, pollution monitoring, logistics, security
rectifier, RF energy harvester. etc. [3],[4]. This evolution of wireless sensor networks has
given birth to the notion of Internet of Things (IOT). However,
deployment of large scale IOT devices is constrained by the
I. I NTRODUCTION dedicated source of energy required to operate these devices
[5]. Furthermore, these devices are usually deployed in remote
Recently, significant amount of interest has been shown terrains or humanly inaccessible areas where replacing the
by the scientific research community into the domain of radio source of energy is an arduous task. Thus, powering these
frequency (RF) energy harvesting as a means of "green" and sensors through RF energy would be a feasible option as
non–polluting source of energy. The ubiquitous presence of suggested in [6], [7], [8].
ambient RF sources like cellular towers, mobile phones, Wi–Fi
routers, television and radio transmitters in a humanized envi- A generic RF energy harvesting circuit, as shown in Fig.
ronment make the option of charging ultra–low power sensors 1, consists of an antenna that captures the ambient RF signals,
by means of RF energy harvesting more feasible. RF energy a matching network for maximum power transfer between
unlike solar or wind [1] is more predictable as it is independent antenna and rectifier, a rectifier that converts the incoming
of the time of the day, weather/geographical location etc. and RF signal into DC voltage that can be further stored in a
can be effectively provided on demand. Inductive coupling power management unit (PMU) or directly used for powering
and magnetic resonance coupling are also other methods up the sensors. Most of the previous works on design and
of wireless energy transfer (WET) which involve resonating development of RF energy harvesting circuit have been based
of coils tuned at a particular frequency, however, there are on single band harvesting including commercially available RF
two major limitations with this approach. First, the power is energy harvesters [9]. However, recent studies have shown that
attenuated according to the cube of distance which restricts by harvesting energy from multiple and randomly distributed
the power transfer distance. Second, it requires the calibration RF sources can lead to significant gains in the harvested
and alignment of resonators/coils which makes it difficult for power [10], [11], [12], [13]. In this paper, we have designed
mobile and remote charging [2]. and developed a dual–band, 3–stage rectifier that converts the
 C HSMS 285C
915 MHz 0
WiFi 2.4 GHz
C HSMS 285C
W3, L3
−10

S11 [dB]
TL3
C R
W5, L5 W4, L4 W1, L1 HSMS 285C
TL5 TL4 TL1

L C
C −20
TL2 C Measured
W2, L2
Simulated
−30
0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2 2.2 2.4
Fig. 2: Proposed dual–band rectifier with matching network Frequency [GHz]

Fig. 3: Simulated and Measured S11 plot of EH rectifier

incident RF energy into DC power. The rectifier works at 915

MHz (GSM 900 MHz) and 2.4 GHz (Wi–Fi/WLAN band).
The dual–band matching is based on multi stub matching optimum balance of DC output voltage and current, a rectifier
as lumped element matching is not preferred for frequencies with three stages was designed in ADS. The rectifier circuit
above 1 GHz. The circuit simulations have been done on ADS has been terminated with a 10 kΩ resistor.
using Harmonic Balance (HB) simulation, which is a frequency
domain circuit analysis technique for nonlinear circuits. This
C. Matching Network
paper further investigates the energy harvesting ability of
the rectifier from mobile phones operating in the GSM 900 The matching network plays a crucial role in power transfer
MHz band. In order to validate the above, mobile phones between the antenna and rectifier. We have implemented a
of some well–known manufacturers such as Samsung and dual–frequency matching scheme [14] capable of simultane-
Motorola have been used. The energy harvesting capability of ously matching frequency dependent complex loads (FDCLs)
the designed RF energy harvesting circuit has been examined having different values at frequencies of interest i.e. 915 MHz
on the basis of its output DC voltage. The proposed work also and 2.42 GHz to a real source impedance of 50 Ω. Fig. 3
highlights the fact that different mobile phones have different depicts the simulation and measured results of the input return
transmit power which impacts the efficiency and output DC loss. Due to imprecise manual soldering and higher parasitic
voltage level of the energy harvesting (EH) circuit. impedance of Schottky diode at high frequencies, the desired
matching at 2.42 GHz has been shifted to 2.25 GHz while
II. R ECTIFIER D ESIGN it is matched at 915 MHz. For improved matching, resistance
compression network (RCN) can be used [15]. RCN minimizes
The rectifier is an important part of the RF energy scav-
the sensitivity of the rectifier to changing input power and load
enger as a proper design of rectifier can significantly enhance
conditions. Hence, smaller variations in input impedance of the
the RF to DC conversion efficiency. Power conversion effi-
rectifier can lead to a better performance.
ciency (PCE) is the most important parameter to analyse the
performance of the rectifier circuit. As shown in (1), Pin is the
incident RF power while PDC is the output DC power and η
defines how much incident RF power has been converted into III. E XPERIMENTAL R ESULTS
DC power. A. Rectifier Efficiency Measurement
η = (PDC /Pin ) × 100 (1)
The fabricated prototype of the proposed rectifier is shown
in Fig. 4(a). It has been fabricated using Rogers RT/Duroid
A. Diode Specifications 5880 substrate with a dielectric constant, r ≈ 2.2 and a
dissipation factor tan δ ≈ 0.0009. The total size of the
To achieve high efficiency of RF–to–DC conversion at low
prototype is about 15 cm X 10 cm. The rectifier is terminated
RF power, schottky diodes are preferred over normal diodes as
with a 10 kΩ resistor to measure DC voltage and power. Due
they have faster switching speed, low diode losses due to their
to imperfect soldering, the load resistance value was measured
metal–semiconductor junction and a forward voltage drop of
to be 8.2 kΩ Fig. 4(b) exhibits the setup used for calculating
150 mV. In our proposed design, the schottky diode HSMS
the rectifier efficiency and output voltage.
285C from Avago Technologies was selected.
B. Rectifier Circuit Since there is a mismatch at 2.42 GHz, all the measure-
ments were taken at 2.25 GHz. This designed RF energy
As shown in Fig. 2, we have implemented a 3–stage harvesting circuit was evaluated by feeding with direct RF
rectifier circuit which acts as a voltage multiplier. Though power from the signal generator. Fig. 5 and Fig. 6 show the
increasing the number of stages increases the rectified voltage simulated and measured efficiency and output DC voltage of
at the output, but it results in longer charging time of the ca- the rectifier at 915 MHz and 2.25 GHz respectively. As it can
pacitors due to the increase in stray capacitance and reduction be observed from the plot, the maximum measured efficiency
in current across the load resistor. Moreover, it also results at 915 MHz is 80% at 8 dBm input RF power while it is 30%
in higher ripples in the output voltage. Hence, to obtain an at 2.25 GHz.
Fig. 4: (a) Fabricated prototype (b) Prototype connected with Fig. 7: Dual–band EH measurement
RF signal generator

The receiver side was connected with the fabricated prototype.

90 Sim. Efficiency 9 The measurement results are shown in Table I. Dual–band
80 Meas. Efficiency 8

Output Voltage [V]

harvesting harnesses 0.088 mW which is twice of the power
Efficiency [%]

70 Sim. Voltage 7 harvested at 915 MHz i.e. 0.043 mW and 1.8 times more
60 Meas. Voltage 6 than the individual bands (915 MHz and 2.25 GHz) combined.
50 5 The amount of power generated (88 µW) is enough to power
40 4 sensors which are used for IOT applications as shown in
30 3 Table II. Table III shows the performance comparison of our
work with the existing work on dual–band RF harvesting on
20 2
parameters like maximum efficiency achieved, received RF
10 1 power range for which PCE is greater than 30% and minimum
0 0 received RF power required to generate output DC voltage of
−20 −10 0 10
1V.
Input Power [dBm]

Fig. 5: Simulated and Measured Results at 915 MHz TABLE I: Dual–band Measured Results
Source 1 Source 2
Output DC Voltage DC Power
Freq: 915 MHz Freq: 2.25 GHz
(V) (mW)
Distance: 1m Distance: 0.5m
50 Sim. Efficiency 9 ON OFF 0.6 0.043
Meas. Efficiency 8 OFF ON 0.24 0.007
Output Voltage [V]

40 ON ON 0.85 0.088
Efficiency [%]

Sim. Voltage 7
Meas. Voltage 6
30
5
4 C. Energy Harvesting Measurement from Smartphones
20
3 In the following, we utilize the circuit developed to obtain
10 2 preliminary results of RF energy harvesting through mobile
1 phones [22]. To explore the feasibility of the above, we
0 0 measured the RF power emitted by the mobile phones using
−20 −10 0 10 spectrum analyzer when the mobile is operating in uplink
Input Power [dBm] and is placed near to the receiving antenna. The measured
Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) has been demon-
Fig. 6: Simulated and Measured Results at 2.25 GHz strated through the spectrum plot in Fig. 8. It can be observed
from Fig. 8 that there is a spike in RF power level when a
call is initiated by the mobile phone. It was also observed
that the RSSI from mobile phones usually fluctuate depending
B. Dual–band RF harvesting measurement
Fig. 7 exhibits the setup to measure the output DC voltage
and harvested power. R&S R
HF907 [16] horn antenna with a TABLE II: Power Consumption level of sensors
gain of up to 14 dBi has been used as a receiving antenna
Sensor Application Power Consumption (µW)
for the RF energy harvesting circuit. This antenna has high Temperature Sensor [17] 10
directivity in the frequency range of interest. The measurement Humidity Sensor [18] 10.32
setup was conducted in an indoor environment (inside an Sensor for Bicycle Torque performance
17
measurements [19]
anechoic/insulated chamber). An RF signal generator was used Wake-up receiver for Wireless Sensor
6.8
to generate 10 mW power at 915 MHz and 2.25 GHz and kept Networks (WSNs) [20]
at a distance of 1m and 0.5m respectively from the receiver. RFID-based sensor [21] 7
 TABLE III: Performance Comparison
Design Our Work [10] [11] [12] [13]
Schottky Diode Schottky Diode Schottky Diode Schottky Diode Schottky Diode
Technology
(HSMS 285C) (SMS 7630) (HSMS 285C) (HSMS 285C) (HSMS 286x)
Band Dual-band Dual-band Dual-band Triple-band Dual-band
Frequency (GHz) 0.915/2.25 0.915/2.45 2.1/2.45 0.94/1.95/2.44 0.92/2.4
LC Boost LC Boost
Matching Network Multi-stub RCN Multi-stub
network Network
80% @ 915 MHz, 8 dBm 42% @ 915 MHz, 0 dBm 24% @ 2.1 GHz, 10 dBm 80% @ 940,MHz, 10 dBm 78% @ 920 MHz, 15 dBm
Efficiency
30% @2.25 GHz, 8 dBm 38% @ 2.45 GHz, 0 dBm 18% @ 2.45 GHz, 10 dBm 42% @ 2.44 GHz, 16 dBm 70% @ 2.4 GHz, 15 dBm
Pin (dBm) range for eff.
-12 to 20 >-10 to 0 NA -9 to 20 -3 to 20
>30%
-6 dBm @ 915 MHz 4 dBm @ 2.1 GHz 1 dBm @ 920 MHz
Pin (dBm) for output vol.
NA NA
>1V
-1 dBm @ 2.25 GHz 5 dBm @ 2.45 GHz 5 dBm @ 2.4 GHz

20 20 2

Output DC voltage [V]

Received Power [dBm]

1.8 3.5
Inst. values Inst. values
0 0 1.6 3
1.4 Avg. value Avg. value
2.5
−20 −20 1.2
1 2
−40 −40 0.8 1.5
0.6 1
−60 −60 0.4
0.2 0.5
−80 −80 0 0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 0 10 20 30 40 50 60
0.8 0.85 0.9 0.95 1 0.8 0.85 0.9 0.95 1
Time [sec] Time [sec]
Frequency [GHz] Frequency [GHz]
(a) (b)

Fig. 8: Spectrum Plots (a) No call (b) During call at one

time instant Fig. 10: (a) Moto X Measurements (b) Samsung Galaxy
Grand Max Measurements.

handsets were deliberately chosen to operate in 2G mode so

that calls are made in GSM 900 MHz band. The data was
collected over multiple calls from each handset. The total call
duration was 1 minute which was divided into two parts : 30
seconds of call–establishment phase (it includes, connection
time, ringing time) and 30 seconds of call–conversation phase.
The average DC voltage of the calling sessions has been
plotted for each handset. Apart from the instantaneous values,
an average DC voltage corresponding to the first 30 seconds
and an average corresponding to last 30 seconds has also
Fig. 9: EH measurement from smartphones been plotted to demonstrate the difference in RF power levels
between the two phases. Fig. 10 (a) and 10 (b) show the output
DC voltage for Moto X and Galaxy Grand Max respectively.
The average DC voltage for first thirty seconds for Grand Max
on the channel conditions, distance from cellular towers, etc. and Moto X is 1 V and 0.58 V respectively and for the next
Two smartphones, from popular manufacturers, namely Galaxy thirty seconds, it is 0.25 V and 0.1 V respectively. One more
Grand Max from Samsung and Moto X from Motorola have observation from Fig. 10 (a) and Fig. 10 (b) is that the output
been used for the experiment. Since mobile handsets can DC voltage has dropped by 13.5 dB (average of both plots)
transmit up to 2 Watts depending on channel conditions and between call–establishment phase and call–conversation phase.
distance from cell towers, the idea of harvesting RF power We also observed that during the call–conversation phase,
from mobile phones can revolutionize future mobile handsets. output voltage is on a higher side when voice activity is higher
as compared to low periods of voice activity. The average DC
voltage obtained over the two call phases for Galaxy Grand
Fig. 9 exhibits the setup used for measuring output DC volt- Max smartphone can be easily found to be
age from a mobile phone. The measurements were recorded
while keeping the mobile phones in close proximity of the 1 V + 0.25 V
EH circuit. For experimental validation of the proposed setup, Average DC voltage = = 0.625 V. (2)
2
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