RF Energy Harversting : Design and implementation of an RF energy harvesting system for SoC

This assignment was given by Nordic Semiconductor. In this project a radio frequency energy harvesting system able to harvest ambient power at 900 MHz (GSM) was simulated and designed. A Villard voltage multiplier, boost converter and power management circuit was implemented for the harvesting system. The intention was to implement a system which would give sufficient output power and voltage to supply a load (nRF52810) at all times. The nRF52810 is a power efficient multi protocol SoC made by Nordic Semiconductor. Since the power harvested by the antenna is of AC power, a recti er was needed. A Villard voltage multiplier was proposed as the most suitable application. It not only recti es the voltage, but the voltage doubles for every stage. A 2-stage Villard voltage multiplier was proposed with the advantage that in theory the output voltage should be four times higher in magnitude than the input voltage. There exists several other ways to boost a voltage, a voltage boost converter was combined with the Villard Voltage multiplier. According to calculations the boost converter should boost the voltage up to 2.3 V. Since the assumed power from the harvesting system may be lower than the power consumed by the load, a power managing circuit was also needed, which would avoid the load to drain the current from the storage element before the voltage level was sufficient. Different solutions for a power management circuit was proposed using different variations of MOSFETs. A real-life design was implemented, but the Villard voltage multiplier gave out a much lower e efficiency than expected from simulations. The output power of the VVM was too low to supply the load (nRF52810)