Efficient and Highly Integrated Millimeter-Wave Receiver for Simultaneous Wireless Information and Power Transfer in Sensor Networks

This article presents a high-efficiency and integrated millimeter-wave (mm-Wave) rectenna, which aims to provide stable wireless power supply for small wireless sensor networks in the Internet of Things (IoT) environments. The antenna adopts slot-coupled feeding, with the feed line and the radiating patch located on opposite sides of the ground plane, and it can effectively reduce the interference between the antenna and circuitry and increase the effective radiating area. Two Schottky diodes are symmetric parallel mounted in rectifier, which can reduce the power losses caused by the junction resistance and improve the power conversion efficiency (PCE). The measurement results show that the rectenna has achieved a maximum gain of 19.2 dBi and PCE of 66.1% with 188- Omega load at 21-dBm input power. Additionally, by using the tiled stacking technique, a dc-dc power management module, a Bluetooth transmitting module and temperature, humidity, and light sensors were integrated with the rectenna to construct a highly integrated mm-Wave power receiver with the dimensions of only 32 x32 x 10 mm(3). This receiver can stably receive RF power from external wireless power source and drive the sensors and information transmitter module to return data in real time, achieving simultaneous wireless power and information transfer (SWIPT), which demonstrate significant application potential in IoT scenarios.