Performance Evaluation of RF Energy Harvesting Circuit with DRA and Planar Antennas

In this study, a rectenna (antenna + rectifier) performance is compared with two different types of antennas; planar and DRA. The CST Microwave Studio and Advance Design System (ADS) is used to perform co-simulation. In this, first a .S2P is generated using two similar antennas keeping at a far-field distance in CST, afterward it is imported in ADS and tested with a typical rectifier circuit. Further, two experimental methods are performed in indoor and outdoor environments to validate the simulation results. In the indoor environment, a horn antenna excited with a signal generator is used as an RF power transmitter. In contrast, in the outdoor environment, the horn antenna is replaced with an ambient power source like a mobile base station. In both methods, at receiving side rectenna (antenna + rectifier) is kept in the far-field region. Here, both planar metallic and dielectric resonator antennas are use done after another with the rectifier circuit to test the rectenna system. From the simulation and experiments performed in indoor and outdoor environment method, it is confirmed that the rectenna system tenders the best performance with dielectric resonator antenna.