A 2.77 μW Ambient RF Energy Harvesting Using DTMOS Cross-Coupled Rectifier on 65 nm SOTB and Wide Bandwidth System Design

Abstract

This paper proposes a structure of the μ W RF energy harvesting (RFEH) system that is used for scavenging RF power from an ambient environment. A cross-coupled rectifier (CCR) with floating sub-circuit structures was utilized in the application of dynamic threshold MOSFET (DTMOS) on Silicon on Thin Buried Oxide (SOTB) to obtain high drain conductance of the MOSFET. A wide bandwidth matching between antenna and rectifier was designed to receive energy from the orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) RF signal with a bandwidth of 15 MHz at 950 MHz band. Realistic measurements with a 950 MHz LTE mobile phone signal from the ambient environment indicate that an average DC output power of 2.77 μ W is harvested with the proposed RFEH system at a level of −19.4 dBm input power. The proposed RFEH system exhibits the best performance when compared to that of other realistic RFEH systems and is a potential candidate for battery-less Internet of Things (IoT) applications.