DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION OF A RADIO FREQUENCY ENERGY HARVESTER FOR WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORK
Abstract
This work aims to design and construct a radio-frequency energy harvester to address the limited power supply issue faced by wireless sensor nodes. This was achieved by designing a 2.4 GHz microstrip patch antenna using High Frequency Structure Simulator (HFSS) that is capable of harvesting Wi-Fi, bluetooth and microwave signals, an impedance matching circuit using LTspice that is capable of matching the resistive impedance of the antenna to the complex impedance of the rectifier/voltage multiplier, and a rectifier/voltage multiplier circuit based on cockcroft-walton voltage multiplier design principle using LTspice that converts the AC signal to DC signal and multiplies the DC output voltage by a factor of its number of stages. The antenna achieved a Return loss S(1,1) of -21 dB at 2.4 GHz, a Voltage Standing Wave Ratio(VSWR) of 1.5, at an efficiency of 48.8, accepted power of 982.45 mW, radiated power of 479.8 mW, a gain of 2.96 dBi, a directivity of 6.33 dB, and a rectified output of approximately 3 VDC from an input magnitude of 0.9 VAC, confirming effective RF to DC Conversion.
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