RF Power Scavenger

In this paper, the process of designing and building of energy harvesting device to collect "free" RF ambient energy is presented. This experiment was conducted for a bachelor's degree Final Year Project at the University of Glasgow. The Power Scavenger device consists of a microstrip wideband antenna, a full wave rectifier and a capacitor as unit storage. The antenna has an omnidirectional radiation pattern in the horizontal plane and an -10-dB impedance bandwidth from 900 MHz to 2250 MHz. Measured results indicate energy harvesting up to 70 mV.

I. Introduction

This work was conducted for a Mechatronics bachelor’s degree Final Year Project, in 2019, at the University of Glasgow, UK. All the experimental works were carried out at the laboratory facilities of the James Watt School of Engineering. To produce an RF power scavenger, the work is distributed into four connected modules: the antenna, the RF to DC Converter, the storage unit, and the output load. Due to the vast presence of radio signals in the air propagated mainly by Wi-Fi spots and mobile phone transmission towers, the antenna was specified to operate in a wide range of frequencies covering 1800 MHz and 2.4 GHz.