A new circularly polarized rectenna for wireless power transmission and data communication

Small distributed wireless sensors are becoming very important in many aspects of our lives. While low data rate passive sensors operate with little energy there is a need for moderate to high data rate distributed sensors for infrastructure monitoring and other applications. Such sensors will require their batteries or onboard capacitors to be charged when depleted for proper operation. In this letter, we propose a circularly polarized (CP) microstrip patch antenna that can function as a WLAN antenna in the 5.15-5.35 GHz and as a rectenna at 5.5 GHz.