UWB Microstrip Patch Antenna Design for Energy Harvesting Applications

Abstract

RF energy harvesting systems, which are the receiver part of Wireless Power Transfer (WPT), have gained significant development in recent years. For maximum energy acquisition over a wide frequency range, such as to provide power to small handheld devices like cell phones, tablets, smart watches, and other smart devices, wideband and compact antennas are desired. RF systems are expected to cover different frequency bands, such as 2.4 GHz, 5.1 GHz, 5.8 GHz (Bluetooth/Wi-Fi), 2.3 GHz, 2.5 GHz, 3.5 GHz, 5 GHz (WiMAX), for energy harvesting. For such an RF harvesting system, the antenna is desired to have a wide bandwidth, good gain, and an omnidirectional radiation pattern. Energy harvesting devices refer to designs that integrate production and storage. For instance, radio frequency energy sources contain a large amount of electromagnetic energy in the environment, and with RF energy harvesting systems, a portion of this electromagnetic energy can be collected and converted into usable DC voltage. Microstrip patch antennas are very good alternatives for energy harvesting applications because they are cost-effective, compact in size and weight, flat in structure, and highly repeatable. This paper presents a microstrip patch antenna with a bandwidth of 3.9 GHz in the 3.4 to 7.3 GHz range for UWB applications. The antenna design has a gain value of 3.28dBi at the numerically calculated resonance frequency of 4.9 GHz and generally covers frequencies used for electronic device communication such as Wi-Fi 5 GHz and WiMAX. The proposed antenna design has gain values that are allowed to be used for RF energy harvesting applications.