Investigation on Designing a Microstrip Patch Antenna Array for RF Energy Harvesting Application

Investigation on Designing a Microstrip Patch Antenna Array for RF Energy Harvesting Application

Rohan Kulaye

Electronics and Telecommunication Department Atharva College of Engineering

Mumbai, India

Mayur Meher

Electronics and Telecommunication Department Atharva College of Engineering

Mumbai, India

Nikhil Badgujar

Electronics and Telecommunication Department Atharva College of Engineering

Mumbai, India

Prof. Tanu Sharma

Electronics and Telecommunication Department Atharva College of Engineering

Mumbai, India

AbstractWith the increasing demand of alternative sources

of energy, radio frequency energy harvesting is getting importance now a days. In this paper we presented different strategies of RF energy harvesting. The feasibility of harvesting is discussed, leading to the conclusion that RF energy Harvesting is preferred for powering small sized wireless devices. The ambient radio frequency energy used as a source is emitted from various sources such as mobile phones, wife, routers, towers

Keywords- Radio Frequency; Energy Harvesting; Antenna

1. INTRODUCTION

   Now a days problems are arising due to excessive use of non-renewable energy sources. It has also caused major effect on environment. Therefore there is a need to find an

   TRANSMITTER

   MICROSTRIP PATCH ANTENNA

   RECTIFIER RF TO DC

   VOLTAGE DOUBLER

   DC OUTPUT

   alternative energy source. So here we can use energy harvesting. Energy harvesting is the process in which we collect energy from different sources such as radio frequency, cell towers, mobile phones etc.

   As there are many renewable energy sources are available but cell towers may be used as eternal supply of renewable energy source. As we know cell towers are situated everywhere in the world and transmits radio frequencies 24 hours. In India cell towers transmit in the frequency range of 869- 890 MHz in CDMA, 935-960 MHz in GSM 900 and

   1810-1880MHz in GSM 1800 bands. Cell towers are situated in roof top of buildings it mostly transmits 10 to 20W per carrier; there may be 3 to 4 carrier operator on a single tower. Here we can used Friis transmission equation to calculate the signal strength of transmitting towers of GSM900 band which is as given below.

   = [ ]2 (1)

   Fig1.Basic Block Diagram of RF Energy Harvesting System

   As there are plenty of cell towers in India, therefore harvesting ambient RF energy would provide an alternate energy source for various applications and reduce radiation health hazards.

   Fig.1 shows the basic block diagram of RF Energy harvesting system.

2. RF ENERGY HARVESTING CIRCUIT

   This section gives the details of RF energy harvesting circuit and also describes some of the basics components which are important for hardware implementation of RF harvesting system.

   1. Antenna

      Antenna is one of the most crucial components in RF

      Where,

      Pr = Received Power Pt= Transmitted Power

      4R

      energy harvesting system to extract maximum power. Main aim of antenna technology for RF harvesting system is to achieve high gain.Microstrip antennas have become very popular in recent decades due to their thin planar profile which

      Gt= Gain of the transmitted Antenna

      Gr= Gain of the receiver Antenna

      R= Distance between the transmitter and receiver antennas

      can be incorporated into the surfaces of consumer products, aircraft, radars and missiles. In this paper, broadband electromagnetically coupled square microstrip antenna (SMSA) is used for the proposed RF energy harvesting system. Antenna has a stacked configuration. The gain of

      antenna is 9.1dB. The antenna is designed for the 935-960 MHz (GSM 900) band but it can also cover part of CDMA transmission band (869-890MHz) [1].

      Patch Antenna:

      The most common type of microstrip antenna is the patch antenna. Antennas using patches as constitutive elements in an array are also possible. A patch antenna is a narrowband, wide-beam antenna fabricated by etching the antenna element pattern in metal trace bonded to an insulating dielectric substrate, such as a PCB, with a continuous metal layer bonded to the opposite side of the substrate which forms a ground plane. Common microstrip antenna shapes are square, rectangular, circular and elliptical.

      Rectangular Patch:

      The most commonly employed microstrip antenna is a rectangular patch which looks like a truncated microstrip transmission line. It is approximately of one-half wavelength long. When air is used as the dielectric substrate, the length of the rectangular microstrip antenna is approximately one-half of a free-space wavelength. As the antenna is loaded with a dielectric as its substrate, the length of the antenna decreases as the relative dielectric constant of the substrate increases.

   2. RF To DC Conversion Rectifier

   The Radio frequency is AC signal to get a DC signal out of the AC signal, a rectifier circuit is required.

   There are various types of rectifier they are as follows:

   1. Single stage voltage doubler

   2. Double stage voltage doubler

   3. Triple stage voltage doubler

   Rectifier includes matching circuit as well as voltage doubler circuit.

   Matching Circuit:

   Matching circuit is placed between source and the rectifier circuit to reduce the dissipated power between the source and the rectifier. It will then increase the output voltage of the circuit.

   Voltage Doubler Circuit:

   A voltage doubler circuit is an electronic circuit it charges capacitors from the input voltage and switches these charges in such a way that, in the ideal case, exactly twice the voltage is produced at the output as its input. In this paper we will be using three stage voltage

   In this paper we will be using Three stage voltage doubler circuit.

3. CONCLUSION

We represented RF energy harvesting system using a high gain electromagnetic coupled antenna. We obtain voltage from RF signal through which we can charge low power consumption devices.

We concluded that RF energy can be obtained from different source Mobile phones, wifi towers, and cell networks.

Fig2. RF to DC Conversion Rectifier

REFERENCES

1. M. Arrawatia,G. Kumar RF energy harvesting system from cell towers in 900MHz band IEEE paper feb. 2016.

2. A. Suddha, M. Vishnu Smart power generation using Radio-

   Frequency waves.ijeee Feb 2016.

3. T. Sharma,G Saini A Survey on RF Energy Harvesting from Mobile Towers ijeee Feb 2016.

4. T. Sharma,G Saini Microstrip Antenna Array for RF Energy Harvesting System IJAIST Jan 2016.

5. D. Patel, R. Mehta RF Energy Harvesting International journal of Engineering Trends and Technology Oct 2014