Performance Evaluation of a Broadband RF-to-DC Rectifier on Short Pulses

In this work, the performance of a recently proposed broadband RF-to-DC rectifier is evaluated for short pulses. The rectifier is designed to cover 0.61 - 1.36 GHz based on the impedance bandwidth. However, this impedance bandwidth is based on the measurement at discrete frequencies and may not be linearly scalable to short wideband pulses due to the nonlinear characteristics of the diodes. Therefore, in order to evaluate the performance of the rectifier on short pulses, a test is performed via circuit simulation using Gaussian input pulses with various pulsewidths and pulse repetition intervals. The results demonstrate that the broadband rectifier still exhibits sufficient rectification efficiency even for very short pulses. Although the rectification efficiency decreases with shorter pulsewidths, the efficiency can be further improved by optimizing the pulse repetition interval and input power.