Rectifier circuit design for 5G energy harvesting applications

Abstract

The need for electronic devices usage has risen significantly over the years. This has in turn generated greater demands for electricity and in addition for green energy sources. These include Radio-Frequency (RF) energy harvesting. In this concept we design a rectifier circuit for RF to DC conversion suitable for operation at sub-6 GHz 5G bands. Such a circuit can be used to supply low-power electronic devices. The proposed rectifier works at the frequency band FR1 of 5G cellular network and more specifically at 3.5 GHz. The most important problem in the RF energy harvesters is low system efficiency, something that limits the popularity of the power harvest. The proposed design is found to be highly efficient in its current form. Numerical results show that the system in a single-tone signal provides maximum power conversion efficiency equal to 42.5% when the load of the circuit is 1.1 KΩ and the input power reaches 9 dBm. The presented rectifier circuit performs better or equally with similar designs in the literature.