Highly Efficient and Low Cost Radio Frequency Rectifier for Energy Harvesting Applications

This work presents a highly efficient and low cost dual band (2.45 GHz and 5.85 GHz) rectifier for various RF energy harvesting at frequencies (2.45 GHz and 5.85 GHz) of ISM Band. The reduction in cost has been achieved by using low cost substrate, FR408hr by Isola Group. The performance of the rectifier has been also compared on Rogers' Duriod 5880 and standard FR4. The rectifier has transmission line based impedance matching network and a low threshold voltage Schottky diode, SMS-7630 has been used for rectification. The circuit is simulated on Keysight Advance Design System (ADS) and realized on 1.575 mm thick substrates. The peak conversion efficiencies of the rectifiers for 2.45 GHz and 5.85 GHz are 59.2% and 34.1% on FR408hr. This performance is very decent as compared to 64.8% and 43.2% on the costly Duriod 5880. However the performance is remarkably better than the 29.1% and 13.8% on standard FR4. It can be seen that the performance on FR408hr is comparable to the costly Duriod 5880 and is way better than the standard low cost FR4 and for just a slight difference of 7-8% of conversion efficiency the overall cost of the rectifier can be reduced by 4 to 5 times by choosing a low cost FR408hr.