A Broadband Rectifier With Wide Input Power Dynamic Range Based on Quadrature Coupler for RF Energy Harvesting

In this paper, a rectifier with wide input power dynamic range (WIPDR) is proposed for radio frequency energy harvesting (RFEH). It is composed of a quadrature coupler (QC) and two different sub-rectifiers (RectH and RectL). Here, RectH and RectL have different optimal input power levels and they are connected to the two output ports of the QC. In the proposed topology, the reflected power of two sub-rectifiers can be recycled to sub-rectifiers and rectified again due to the feature of the QC. Besides, in each sub-rectifier, three transmission line sections are employed to further extend the dynamic range of input power. Theoretical analysis is carried out. To validate the proposed approach, we design and implement a 2.45 GHz WIPDR rectifier. The measurement results show that the dynamic range of input power for RF-DC power conversion efficiency (PCE) higher than 50% is from 3.7 to 30.7 dBm (27 dB). In addition, its bandwidth (for S11< -10 dB) is from 1.74 to 2.8 GHz with a 16 dBm input power (Pin). These results indicate that the proposed rectifier not only achieves a broad operating band but also has a WIPDR.