Compact Flat Dipole Rectenna for IoT Applications

A new compact topology of rectenna, which combines a miniaturized wideband printed antenna and a rectifier integrated on the radiating surface, is reported in this paper. The rectenna is designed for ISM 900 MHz band and applied to wireless power transmission and energy harvesting to supply Ultra-Wideband tags for 3D indoor localization. The rectenna allows activating a DC-DC boost converter that supplies power to the tags. It exhibits a minimum conversion efficiency of 25% for very low microwave power densities (> 0.18 µW/cm 2) on the non-optimal loading impedance (of about 10 kΩ) of a commercial DC-to-DC boost converter and power management unit. The harvested DC voltage obtained from this novel rectenna exceeds 330 mV for microwave power density of 0.22 µW/cm 2. This measured DC voltage is in the range of the cold turn-on/start-up voltage of nowadays commercial off-the-shelf DC-to-DC boost converters and power management units. The proposed rectenna is also very compact, as its surface (11 × 6 cm 2) is of 0.05λ 2 at the operating frequency (860 MHz).