Development of the RF Energy Harvester Circuit

• Main Author: Savarimuthu, Rejinah Jessy
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: IRC 2014
• Subjects: TK Electrical engineering. Electronics Nuclear engineering
• Online Access: http://utpedia.utp.edu.my/14741/1/%5BCOMPILED%5D%20FYP%20DISSERTATION%20-%20REJINAH%20JESSY%20%2816718%29.pdf; http://utpedia.utp.edu.my/14741/

Energy Harvesting is motivated by the urge to address the issue of climate change and global warming also brought to an inspiration to use RF energy harvester circuit as an alternative for battery usage on the fire fighter wearable GPS tracking sensor to avoid the cause of explosion. This project is based on the idea of harvesting the ambient RF energy. The desired RF energy (GSM-900) will be captured by a receiver antenna in which it will be harvested as a DC voltage levels by the well designed RF energy harvester circuit. The receiver antenna is not considered as part of this project due to a critical stipulated time frame provided. The RF energy harvester circuit is formed by the stages integration of ceramic capacitors and Schottky diodes. Many models of the conventional rectifier circuit have been considered however an optimal stages design of RF energy harvester circuit are developed in this project from the analysis done on Dickson’s voltage doubler topology. The harvested energy from the output of the RF voltage rectifier circuit will then be used to energize the electronics devices with small electrical specifications. By using GSM-900 frequency band as the source of energy, both uplink and downlink frequencies are taking part in the RF energy harvesting. Nevertheless the most suited printed circuit board are investigated and its criteria is taken into consideration in designing the entire system of harvester circuit to achieve a lower loss output.