An Octave Bandwidth RF Harvesting Tee-Shirt

摘要

This paper presents 16 and 81-element broadband rectenna arrays screen printed on a cotton tee-shirt for harvesting $4-130 mu mathrm{W}/ext{cm}^{2}$ power densities between 2–4 GHz. The antenna is a self-complementary tightly-coupled bow-tie array with a period of about $lambda_{mathrm{O}}/6$ at the highest frequency. Each array element feed is connected to a packaged Schottky diode using silver paint. Full-wave antenna simulations are performed with specific tissue electrical parameters for the torso, as well as for a body phantom. The diodes impedance as a function of dc load and input power density is analyzed using source-pull harmonic-balance simulations. Measurements using a water-filled phantom show up to $mathrm{P}_{ext{DC}=}10 mumathrm{W}$ for incident power densities of $4 mumathrm{W}/ext{cm}^{2}$ at the center of the band, with a DC load of $mathrm{R}_{ext{DC}}=2mathrm{k}Omega$.