The capability to efficiently harvest power from ambient energy sources is a crucial element for the development of low-maintenance wireless sensor networks. Available energy levels that can be harvested from ambient electromagnetic (EM) sources are rather low ( 0,1µW/cm2). Insufficient information about the available EM energy under different working conditions results in poor design decisions, leading to a sub-optimal system design. In this paper, a novel and efficient simulation methodology is developed which predicts the statistical distribution of the power harvested by an antenna when immersed in a given (statistical) EM environment. The methodology is used to quantify the impact of the antenna's orientation, location, exact geometry, etc. on the quantity of the harvested energy. The methodology is successfully applied to a realistic energy harvesting antenna and different EM environments (indoor, outdoor,…)
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