ZTE Communications ›› 2018, Vol. 16 ›› Issue (1): 2-10.doi: 10.3969/j.issn.1673-5188.2018.01.002

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Ultra-Low Power High-Efficiency UHF-Band Wireless Energy Harvesting Circuit Design and Experiment

LI Zhenbing, LI Jian, ZHOU Jie, ZHAO Fading, WEN Guangjun   

  1. Centre for RFIC and System, School of Communication and Information Engineering, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 611731, China
  • Received:2017-11-09 Online:2018-02-25 Published:2020-03-16
  • About author:LI Zhenbing (thomaslizhenbing@163.com) received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in electronic for communicating system (ESCo) from the Occidental Britany University (UBO) of France in 2014 and 2016 respectively. He is currently an assistant researcher with the RFID laboratory in University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC), China. His research interests include RF, microwave and millimeter wave integrated circuits and system. His is also interested in the Internet of Things devices and system, RFID system and networks, antennas and its application in microwave engineering area. His representative publication is “W-band SIW Power Combiner/Divider Based on the Antipodal Fin-line SIW-RW Transition and Longitudinal-slot Coupling Techniques,” in Electromagnetics Research C (vol. 72, pp. 43-54, 2017).|LI Jian (uestclijian@163.com) received the B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in communication engineering from UESTC, China in 2007, 2010, and 2015 respectively. He is currently an assistant professor with UESTC and is a visiting scholar with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA. His research interests include RF, microwave, and millimeter wave integrated circuits and system. He is also interested in electromagnetic metamaterial and its applications in substrate integrated waveguide.|ZHOU Jie (jie.zhou1994@hotmail.com) received the B.S. degree in electronic information engineering from Jilin University, China in 2016. She is currently working towards an M.S. degree at School of Communication & Information Engineering, UESTC, China. Her research interests include integrated RF energy harvesting systems, low-power wireless sensor network, and RFID.|ZHAO Fading (zhaofading@163.com) received his master’s degree from School of Electronic Information Engineering, Southwest Petroleum University, China in 2012. He is currently working towards a Ph.D. degree at school of Communication & Information Engineering, UESTC, China. His research interests include integrated RF energy harvesting systems, low-power wireless sensor network, RFIC, and analog/mixed signal circuit design.|WEN Guangjun (wgj@uestc.edu.cn) received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Chongqing University, China in 1995 and UESTC, China in 1998, respectively. He is currently a professor in UESTC. His research and industrial experience covers abroad spectrum of electromagnetics, including RF, microwave and millimeter wave integrated circuits and system design for wireless communications, navigation, identification, and mobile TV applications, RF-IC/MMIC/MMMIC device modeling, System on Chip (SoC) and System in Package (SiC) design, RF/microwave/millimeter wave power source design, the Internet of things devices and system, RFID system and networks, antennas, as well as model of electromagnetic metamaterial and its application in microwave engineering area.
  • Supported by:
    This work was supported in part by Guangdong Provincial Science and Technology Planning Program (Industrial High-Tech Field) of China under Grant(No. 2016A010101036);in part by Sichuan Provincial Science and Technology Planning Program (Technology Supporting Plan) of China under Grant(Nos. 2016GZ0061);in part by Sichuan Provincial Science and Technology Planning Program (Technology Supporting Plan) of China under Grant(Nos. 2016GZ0116);in part by Sichuan Provincial Science and Technology Planning Program (Technology Supporting Plan) of China under Grant(Nos. 2017GZ0336);in part by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities under Grant(No. ZYGX2016Z011);in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant(Nos. 61371047);in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant(Nos. 61601093);in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant(Nos. 61701082);in part by Science and Technology on Electronic Information Control Laboratory.

Abstract:

In this paper, an ultra-low power high-efficiency ultra-high frequency (UHF)-band wireless energy harvesting circuit based on the diode SMS7360 is designed and experimentally demonstrated, being operated in all released Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) bands in China (GSM900 band: 0.87-0.96 GHz and GSM1800 band: 1.71-1.86 GHz). This UHF-band wireless energy harvesting circuit can harvest energy at 0.87-0.96 GHz and 1.71-1.86 GHz bands simultaneously in outdoor or indoor environment. The test results show that a radio-frequency (RF)-to-direct-current (DC) conversion efficiency in the range of 20%-63.2% is obtained for an available input power of -22 dBm to 1 dBm in GSM900 band and that in the range of 13.8%-55.5% is achieved for an available input power of -22 dBm to 3 dBm in GSM1800 band. The harvested RF energy is converted into DC energy and be stored in a 6.8 mF super capacitor through the energy management circuit. This super capacitor’s capacity is more than 20 mJ, which can meet the demand of high-speed broadband wireless communication transceivers. This ultra-low power high-efficiency UHF-band wireless energy harvesting circuit could be used to achieve the low power wireless sensor network node (tag).

Key words: GSM900, GSM1800, rectifier, RF energy harvesting, wireless sensor network