Monolithic Integration of a Microwave Amplifier and a Multisource Energy Harvesting Circuit

In this letter, a 1.76 x 1.76 mm monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) includes a self-health monitoring radio frequency (RF) amplifier and a multisource energy harvesting (EH) circuit is proposed. The power amplifier (PA) integrates a three-port filter at the input port to reduce standing waves, a thermopile to monitor the temperature, and a terminal power sensor at the output port to enable in-line measurement of output power. In addition, the multisource EH circuit collects heat, standing wave, optical or electrostatic (if present) energy simultaneously through the integrated thermopile, the three-port filter, and a diode chain. This design improves the robustness of the circuit while also harvesting the energy generated in the circuit and reusing it for future power supply. In the experiments, the output performance of the amplifier, the energy harvesters, and the multisource EH circuit are measured and analyzed. When the input RF power is 0 dBm and the center frequency is 4.3 GHz, the amplifier power gain is 10.6 dB, and the open-circuit output voltages of the integrated thermopile and the multisource EH circuit are 1.88 and 458.88 mV, respectively.