Millimeter-Wave Power Transmission for Compact and Large-Area Wearable IoT Devices Based on a Higher Order Mode Wearable Antenna

Owing to the shorter wavelength in the millimeter-wave (mmWave) spectrum, miniaturized antennas can receive power with a higher efficiency than UHF bands, promising sustainable mmWave-powered Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Nevertheless, the performance of a mmWave power receiver has not been compared, numerically or experimentally, to its sub6-GHz counterpart. In this article, the performance of mmWave-powered receivers is evaluated based on a novel wearable textile-based higher order mode microstrip antenna, showing the benefits of wireless power transmission (WPT). First, a broadband antenna is proposed maintaining a stable wearable measured bandwidth from 24.9 to 31.1 GHz, over threefold improvement compared to a conventional patch. The proposed antenna has a measured 8.2 dBi co-polarized gain with the highest thickness-normalized efficiency of a wearable antenna. When evaluated for compact power receivers, the measured path gain shows that WPT at 26 GHz outperforms 2.4 GHz by 11 dB. A rectenna array based on the proposed antenna is then evaluated analytically showing the potential for up to
$6.3\times $
higher power reception compared to a UHF patch, based on the proposed antenna’s gain and an empirical path-loss model. Both use cases demonstrate that mmWave-powered rectennas are suitable for area-constrained and large-area wearable IoT applications.