A Triple-band Hexagonal-Shaped Microstrip Patch Antenna for RF Energy Harvesting in Smart City Applications

Radio frequency energy harvesting (RFEH) approach is found to be an appropriate solution for providing various smart city services in a better way by extending the lifetime of sensing nodes incorporated in the smart city. A novel compact hexagonal-shaped microstrip radiator for RFEH applications is presented for smart city applications. The proposed antenna, designed at 1.6mm thick low-cost FR4 substrate sheet, operates 1.8 GHz (1.70-1.84 GHz), 2.6 GHz (2.54-2.68 GHz), and 3.5 GHz (2.96-4.64 GHz) covering newly released LTE and 5G bands in addition to the GSM1800 band. A ground loaded slot introduced in the ground plane causes the second resonant band. Further, introducing a notch on to the slot-loaded ground plane produces the desired resonances with improved impedance matching and as well as impedance bandwidth performances at resonating bands of the proposed antenna with reducing antenna dimensions. The proposed configuration having a dimension of 100×100×1.6 mm
³
. The implemented design provided a gain of 6.41 dBi, is maximum at the operating frequency.