AN ANALYSIS OF ANTENNAS AND THE EFFECT OF PROXIMATE ELEMENTS AND CONDUCTORS

When designing and implementing energy harvesting devices, additional unanticipated energy may be harvested, dissipated or lost due to interference involving proximate elements on the Printed Circuit Board (PCB) or Integrated Circuit (IC). These components can be PCB or IC traces, planes or discrete circuit components. This alters a designer's expectations as to how much energy should be harvested. Empirical analysis can be used to quantify the energy added or subtracted by proximate elements. In this thesis, the Active Remote Sensor (ARS) PCB is modified a number of times to provide enough variations to compare each section's contribution to the overall energy harvested. The differences in harvested energy will provide future designers with a better sense of layout in order to reduce or harness, this effect. Additionally, the number and arrangement of antenna and voltage doublers are modified to see which configuration(s) work most effectively