A Novel Ultra-Lightweight Multiband Rectenna on Paper for RF Energy Harvesting in the Next Generation LTE Bands

This paper introduces a novel compact ultra-lightweight multiband RF energy harvester fabricated on a paper substrate. The proposed rectenna is designed to operate in all recently released LTE bands (range 0.79-0.96 GHz; 1.71-2.17 GHz; and 2.5-2.69 GHz). High compactness and ease of integration between antenna and rectifier are achieved by using a topology of nested annular slots. The proposed rectifier features an RF-to-dc conversion efficiency in the range of 5%-16% for an available input power of -20 dBm in all bands of interest, which increases up to 11%-30% at -15 dBm. The rectenna has been finally tested both in laboratory and in realistic scenarios featuring a superior performance to other state-of-the-art RF harvesters on flexible substrates.