High efficiency microwave rectenna circuit: modelling and design

An equivalent circuit approach used for the modelling of a system consisting of an antenna and an RF/DC rectifying circuit (rectenna) is presented. It is shown that using this approach, no electromagnetic simulation tool is required for the simulation and optimisation of the overall circuit. The realised rectenna operates at 2.45 GHz, and shows very good agreement between the predicted efficiency using the presented model (about 75%) and the measured one.