Antennas and Metamaterials for Electromagnetic Energy Harvesting

The emergence of microwave energy harvesting systems, commonly referred to as rectenna or Wireless Power Transfer (WPT) systems, has enabled numerous applications in many areas since their primary goal is to recycle the ambient microwave energy. In such systems, microstrip antennas are used as the main source for collecting the electromagnetic energy. In this work, a novel collector based on metamaterial particles, in what is known as a Split Ring Resonator (SRR), to harvest electromagnetic energy is presented. Such collectors are much smaller in size and more efficient than existing collectors (antennas). A feasibility study of SRRs to harvest electromagnetic energy is conducted using a full wave simulator (HFSS). To prove the concept, a 5.8 GHz SRR is designed and fabricated and then tested using a power source, an Infiniium oscilloscope and a commercially available patch antenna array. When excited by a plane wave with an H-field normal to the structure, a voltage build up of 611 mV is measured across a surface mount resistive load inserted in the gap of a single loop SRR. In addition, a new efficiency concept is introduced, taking into account the microwave-to-AC conversion efficiency which is missing from earlier work. Finally, a 9X9 SRR array is compared with a 2X2 patch antenna array, both placed in a fixed footprint. The simulation results show that the array of SRRs can harvest electromagnetic energy more efficiently and over a wider bandwidth range