Far-field wireless power harvesting for inaccessible area wireless monitoring

Far-field wireless power solutions are essential for wireless monitoring of inaccessible industrial areas. However, the intuitive nature of RF power is to degrade with distance square law. Due to this attribute, the wireless power solution in a far-field zone has not been practically conceptualized for industrial deployments. To identify a feasible wireless power solution, a 5×10 rectenna panel has been designed and developed in this work. The panel has been designed with a staggered row arrangement to investigate different rectenna arrangement patterns. With experimentation, an optimized rectenna arrangement pattern has been selected for demonstration of its applicability for network sustenance. This work emphasises that smart charging of storage capacitors plays a vital role in extending the wireless power range. The power demand for resource-constrained devices is on a microwatt scale, which can be easily delivered through wireless power in seconds.