Wideband RF rectifier circuit for low-powered IoT wireless sensor nodes

This paper proposed a broadband RF-rectifier circuit. The design is matched through a combination of a wideband resistance compression network (RCN) with a modified short-stub matching network (MN) for Terminal-1 (T1) and a II-MN for Terminal-2 (T2). The RCN incorporates the two terminals using a transmission line (TL) of 50 ⠊. The TL-MN parameters are analyzed and evaluated in the design using closed-form equations. The HSMS2850-based prototype model demonstrates that the peak RF-to-DC power conversion efficiencies (PCE) realized at 3 dBm input power (P,) are (76.92%, 70.53%, 69.75%, 67.54%) for (1.82, 2.13, 2.45, and 2.67 GHz), respectively. The prototype is terminated with a 1 k ⠊ load terminal (RL) and attained a maximum average output DC voltage VDC of 2.52 V. The model is tested in the ambient environment and achieved a T1(T2) VDC of 0.350(0.230) V. This approach also mitigated the impact of impedance variations imposed by diode non-linearity. The RF harvester drive a low-power evaluation module (EVM) for T1(T2) at 0.600(0.470) V.

Automated summary

This paper proposes a design for a broadband RF-rectifier circuit, which achieves matching through a combination of a wideband resistance compression network and a modified short-stub matching network. The circuit's parameters are analyzed and evaluated using closed-form equations. Experimental results demonstrate high RF-to-DC power conversion efficiency at different frequencies.